provender
/ˈprɒvɪndə
/noun [mass noun]
1 dated Animal fodder: to raise the prices of provender for cattle, importation has been severely curtailed...
- Current costs consisted of provender, i.e. fodder and bedding, the pay of the workers who looked after the horses, and shoeing.
- Running carrier services efficiently involved considerable expenditure on horses together with their equipment and provender.
- The owner attached some provender to a rod, and suspended it over the animal's head. The animal, seeing these viands almost within reach, stepped gayly forward to consume them.
1.1chiefly humorous Food: there’s no one to carry your provender in brown paper bags to the boot of your car...
- The children refuse all human food until they are given newly shelled beans, upon which provender they subsist until they learn to eat bread.
- We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.
- As the rocket and purslane disappeared, I began to forage Greenmarket for fall provender.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French provendre, based on an alteration of Latin praebenda 'things to be supplied' (see prebend).