eat vs feed what difference

what is difference between eat and feed

English

Etymology

From Middle English eten, from Old English etan (“to eat”), from Proto-West Germanic *etan, from Proto-Germanic *etaną (“to eat”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁édti, from *h₁ed- (“to eat”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /iːt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /it/
• Rhymes: -iːt

Verb

eat (third-person singular simple present eats, present participle eating, simple past ate or (dialectal) et or (obsolete) eat, past participle eaten or (dialectal) etten)

1. To ingest; to be ingested.
   1. (transitive, intransitive) To consume (something solid or semi-solid, usually food) by putting it into the mouth and swallowing it.
      • At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.
   3. (intransitive) To consume a meal.
      • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

        I eat in the kitchen.

   4. (intransitive, ergative) To be eaten.
      • 1852, The New Monthly Magazine (page 310)

        I don’t know any quarter in England where you get such undeniable mutton—mutton that eats like mutton, instead of the nasty watery, stringy, turnipy stuff, neither mutton nor lamb, that other countries are inundated with.

      • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

        […] dish him [the fish] with slices of oranges, barberries, grapes, gooseberries, and butter; and you will find that he eats deliriously either with farced pain or gammon pain.

   5. (copulative, intransitive) To have a particular quality of diet; to be well-fed or underfed (typically as “eat healthy” or “eat good”).
2. To use up.
   1. (transitive) To destroy, consume, or use up.
      • 1857-1859, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians

        His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.

   2. (transitive, programming, informal) To consume (an exception, an event, etc.) so that other parts of the program do not receive it.
      • 2005, Wallace B. McClure, ‎Gregory A. Beamer, ‎John J. Croft IV, Professional ADO.NET 2 (page 246)

        A bigger problem, however, is that if you catch/eat an exception and do nothing with it, you are very likely introducing subtle bugs in your application that will be next to impossible to track down.

   3. (transitive, informal, of a device) To damage, destroy, or fail to eject a removable part or an inserted object.
      • 1991, Shane Black, The Last Boy Scout (movie)

        No! There’s a problem with the cassette player. Don’t press fast forward or it eats the tape!

   4. (transitive, informal, of a vending machine or similar device) To consume money (or other instruments of value, such as a token) deposited or inserted by a user, while failing to either provide the intended product or service, or return the payment.
      • 1977, Nancy Dowd, Slap Shot (movie)

        Hey! This stupid [soda vending] machine ate my quarter.

3. (transitive, informal) To cause (someone) to worry.

4. (transitive, business) To take the loss in a transaction.
   • 1988, George Gallo, Midnight Run (movie)

     I have to have him in court tomorrow, if he doesn’t show up, I forfeit the bond and I have to eat the $300,000.
5. (transitive, slang) To be injured or killed by (something such as a firearm or its projectile), especially in the mouth.
   • 1944, William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman, The Big Sleep (screenplay)

     I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and Eddie Mars’ gang. I dodge bullets and eat saps.

   • 1997, A. A. Gill, “Diary” (in The Spectator, 1 November 1997):

     Friends are only necessary in the ghastly country, where you have to have them, along with rubber boots and a barometer and secateurs, to put off bucolic idiocy, a wet brain, or eating the 12-bore.

   • 2012, Kaya McLaren, How I Came to Sparkle Again: A Novel, St. Martin’s Press (→ISBN):

     Mike had been to other calls where someone had eaten a gun. He knew to expect teeth embedded in the ceiling and brains dripping off it.

   • 2017, Edward W. Robertson, Stardust, Edward W. Robertson:

     The animal was sweating and scared and MacAdams was surprised when they finished up without either of them eating a kick.

   • 2018, Daniel Tomazic, Of Bullies and Men: Young Adult Fiction (→ISBN), page 18:

     There was a resounding smacking noise and Georgy was sure Philip had just eaten a fist.

6. (transitive, intransitive) To corrode or erode.

7. (transitive, slang) To perform oral sex (on a person or body part).

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (consume): consume, swallow; see also Thesaurus:eat
• (cause to worry): bother, disturb, worry
• (eat a meal): dine, breakfast, chow down, feed one’s face, have one’s breakfast/lunch/dinner/supper/tea, lunch

Derived terms

Related terms

• fret
• ort

Translations

See also

• drink
• edible
• food

Noun

eat (plural eats)

1. (colloquial) Something to be eaten; a meal; a food item.
   • 2011, William Chitty, ‎Nigel Barker, ‎Michael Valos, Integrated Marketing Communications (page 167)

     Eating a Picnic creates a flurry of wafer pieces, flying peanuts and chocolate crumbs. […] As well as being messy, Picnic happens to be a big eat – something of a consumption challenge in fact.

Anagrams

• -ate, AET, Até, Atë, ETA, TEA, Tea, a.e.t., aet, ate, eta, tea, æt.

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈe.at/, [ˈeät̪]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈe.at/, [ˈɛːɑt̪]

Verb

eat

1. third-person singular present active subjunctive of eō

Northern Sami

Pronunciation

• (Kautokeino) IPA^(key): /ˈea̯h(t)/

Verb

eat

1. first-person plural present of ii

West Frisian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪə̯t/

Pronoun

eat

1. something, anything

   Antonym: neat

Further reading

• “eat”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiːd/
• Rhymes: -iːd

Etymology 1

From Middle English feden, from Old English fēdan (“to feed”), from Proto-Germanic *fōdijaną (“to feed”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Cognate with West Frisian fiede (“to nourish, feed”), Dutch voeden (“to feed”), Danish føde (“to bring forth, feed”), Swedish föda (“to bring forth, feed”), Icelandic fæða (“to feed”), and more distantly with Latin pāscō (“feed, nourish”, verb) through Indo-European. More at food, fodder.

Verb

feed (third-person singular simple present feeds, present participle feeding, simple past and past participle fed)

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

   • If thine enemy hunger, feed him.

2. (intransitive) To eat (usually of animals).
3. (transitive) To give (someone or something) to (someone or something else) as food.
   • 2012 December 25 (airdate), Steven Moffat, The Snowmen (Doctor Who)

     DR SIMEON: I said I’d feed you. I didn’t say who to.

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

5. (figuratively) To satisfy, gratify, or minister to (a sense, taste, desire, etc.).
   • 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene iii^[1]:

     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

6. To supply with something.

7. To graze; to cause to be cropped by feeding, as herbage by cattle.

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

8. (sports, transitive) To pass to.
9. (phonology, of a phonological rule) To create the environment where another phonological rule can apply; to be applied before another rule.

10. (syntax, of a syntactic rule) To create the syntactic environment in which another syntactic rule is applied; to be applied before another syntactic rule.

Synonyms

• (to give food to eat): nourish

Derived terms

• underfeed

Translations

Noun

feed (countable and uncountable, plural feeds)

1. (uncountable) Food given to (especially herbivorous) animals.

2. Something supplied continuously.

3. The part of a machine that supplies the material to be operated upon.

4. The forward motion of the material fed into a machine.
5. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, 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; […]
6. (countable) A gathering to eat, especially in quantity.

7. (Internet) Encapsulated online content, such as news or a blog, that can be subscribed to.
8. A straight man who delivers lines to the comedian during a performance.
   • 2020, Oliver Double, Alternative Comedy: 1979 and the Reinvention of British Stand-Up (page 38)

     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 […]

Derived terms

Translations

Derived terms

Etymology 2

fee + -(e)d

Verb

feed

1. simple past tense and past participle of fee

Anagrams

• deef, e-fed

Dutch

Etymology

From English feed.

Noun

feed m (plural feeds)

1. encapsulated online content, such as news or a blog, that can be subscribed to; a feed
2. a mechanism on social media for users to receive updates from their network

Manx

Etymology

From Old Irish fichet (compare Scottish Gaelic fichead), genitive singular of fiche (“twenty”), from Proto-Celtic *wikantī (compare Welsh ugain), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁wih₁ḱm̥t (compare Latin vīgintī), from *dwi(h₁)dḱm̥ti (“two-ten”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fiːdʒ/

Numeral

feed

1. twenty

References

• Gregory Toner, Maire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Dagmar Wodtko, Maire-Luise Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “fiche”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English feed.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈfid͡ʒ/

Noun

feed m (plural feeds)

1. (Internet) feed (encapsulated online content that one can subscribe to)

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English feed.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfid/, [ˈfið̞]

Noun

feed m (plural feeds)

1. (Internet) feed (encapsulated online content that one can subscribe to)

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