feed: Meaning and Definition of
feed
Pronunciation: (fēd), [key]
— v., n. fed, feed•ing,
—v.t.
- to give food to; supply with nourishment: to feed a child.
- to yield or serve as food for: This land has fed 10 generations.
- to provide as food.
- to furnish for consumption.
- to satisfy; minister to; gratify: Poetry feeds the imagination.
- to supply for maintenance or operation, as to a machine: to feed paper into a photocopier.
- to provide with the necessary materials for development, maintenance, or operation: to feed a printing press with paper.
- to use (land) as pasture.
- Stand in the wings and feed them their lines.
- to supply (an actor, esp. a comedian) with lines or action, the responses to which are expected to elicit laughter.
- to provide cues to (an actor).
- Chiefly Brit.to prompt:Stand in the wings and feed them their lines.
- to distribute (a local broadcast) via satellite or network.
—v.i.
- (esp. of animals) to take food; eat: cows feeding in a meadow; to feed well.
- to be nourished or gratified; subsist: to feed on grass; to feed on thoughts of revenge.
- to pass (work) successively into a machine in such a manner that each new piece is held in place by or connected to the one before.
—n.
- food, esp. for farm animals, as cattle, horses or chickens.
- an allowance, portion, or supply of such food.
- a meal, esp. a lavish one.
- the act of feeding.
- the act or process of feeding a furnace, machine, etc.
- the material, or the amount of it, so fed or supplied.
- a feeding mechanism.
- feeder (def. 10).
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- a line spoken by one actor, the response to which by another actor is expected to cause laughter.
- an actor, esp. a straight man, who provides such lines.
- a local television broadcast distributed by satellite or network to a much wider audience, esp. nationwide or international.
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- reluctant to eat; without appetite.
- dejected; sad.
- not well; ill.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.