feed

verb

1. (transitive)To give (someone or something) food to eat.

   “Feed the dog every evening.”

   “If thine enemy hunger, feed him.”

2. (intransitive)To eat (usually of animals).

   “Spiders feed on gnats and flies.”

   ““The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his majesty’s revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary’s expedient of putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat;[...]”

   “But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge,[…].”

   “If we have time we might go on to Brighton, feed at the 'Ship,' and come back in the cool.”

   “While feeding, the basking shark swims at about two knots per hour, and this enables it to eat and breathe in the same motion.”

3. (ditransitive)To give (someone or something) to (someone or something else) as food.

   “Don't feed him too much; he's still a baby.”

   “Feed the fish to the dolphins.”

   “DR SIMEON: I said I'd feed you. I didn't say who to.”

   “A young female farm worker was fed alive to a herd of pigs after allegedly being brutally raped and beaten by a colleague with a grudge against her father.”

4. (transitive)To give to a machine to be processed.

   “Feed the paper gently into the document shredder.”

5. (transitive)To supply (a machine) with something to be processed.

   “We got interesting results after feeding the computer with the new data.”

6. (figuratively, transitive)To satisfy, gratify, or minister to (a sense, taste, desire, etc.).

   “If I can catch him once upon the hip, / I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.”

   “feeding him with the hope of liberty”

7. (transitive)To supply with something.

   “Springs feed ponds with water.”

   “The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed”

8. (transitive)To graze; to cause to be cropped by feeding, as herbage by cattle.

   “If grain is too forward in autumn, feed it with sheep.”

   “Once in three years, or every other year, feed your mowing-lands.”

9. (transitive)To pass to.

   “Morrison then played a pivotal role in West Brom's equaliser, powering through the middle and feeding Tchoyi, whose low, teasing right-wing cross was poked in by Thomas at the far post”

10. (transitive)To create the environment where another phonological rule can apply; to be applied before (another rule).

    “Nasalization feeds raising.”

11. (transitive)To create the syntactic environment in which another syntactic rule is applied; to be applied before (another syntactic rule).

    “This orthodox analysis […] leads to the conclusion that […] Subject–Auxiliary Inversion (SAI) is fed by the contraction operation.”

12. (form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of fee

noun

1. (uncountable)Food given to (especially herbivorous) non-human animals.

   “They sell feed, riding helmets, and everything else for horses.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Something supplied continuously.

   “a satellite feed”

3. (countable, uncountable)The part of a machine that supplies the material to be operated upon.

   “the paper feed of a printer”

4. (countable, uncountable)The forward motion of the material fed into a machine.
5. (Australia, New-Zealand, UK, colloquial, countable)A meal.

   “184?, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor One proposed going to Hungerford-market to do a feed on decayed shrimps or other offal laying about the market; another proposed going to Covent-garden to do a 'tightener' of rotten oranges, to which I was humorously invited; […]”

   “"There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so; there won't be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds at restaurants."”

   “‘Still hungry! Well, we’ll see if Larry can find you a feed of beef when the billy’s boiled.’”

6. (countable)A gathering to eat, especially in large quantities.

   “They held a crab feed on the beach.”

7. (Internet, countable, uncountable)online content presented sequentially:

   “I've subscribed to the feeds of my favourite blogs, so I can find out when new posts are added without having to visit those sites.”

8. (Internet, countable, often, uncountable)online content presented sequentially:

   “Refresh the top of your various “feeds” — the running column of content on some versions of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — and you will see the latest news at the top. The further back you scroll, the older the material gets.”

   “I use Native, that’s what other Native people on Facebook use. I have 660 friends. Tons of Native friends in my feed. Most of my friends, though, are people I don’t know, who’d happily friended me upon request.”

   “Despite spending years studying these toxic dynamics and the better part of a month watching them up close in strangers’ feeds, I was still, like so many, surprised to see it all reflected at the ballot box. We shouldn’t have been surprised; our divisions have been in front of our faces and inside our feeds this whole time.”

9. (countable, uncountable)A straight man who delivers lines to the comedian during a performance.

   “Don Ward is often described as a former comic, having some experience in this area as a young man, acting as a feed for the comic actor David Lodge at Parkins Holiday Camp in Jersey […]”