释义 |
feed /fiːd /verb (past and past participle fed /fɛd/) [with object]1Give food to: did you remember to feed the cat? [with two objects]: she fed him bits of biscuit...- She got right down to work, feeding every dog their measured amount of food, then cleaning out their cages.
- I'm the one who usually feeds the cat because I wake first and because I'm here more often in the early evening.
- After feeding his cat, he'd jump in his car for the 15-minute drive to work.
Synonyms give food to, provide food for, provide for, cater for, prepare food for, cook for, make a meal for, wine and dine; nourish, sustain; suckle, breastfeed, bottle-feed dated victual 1.1 [no object] (Especially of an animal or baby) take food; eat something: the baby will feed according to her needs...- There is not much information available about where the birds are feeding and their nesting habitat closer to the marsh.
- He had stopped for a while in a glade as the horse fed.
- You can tell your baby is feeding well if she is gaining enough weight.
Synonyms eat, take nourishment, partake of food, consume food, devour food, have a meal informal snack, graze British informal nosh dated sup graze, browse, crop, pasture, ruminate; eat 1.2 ( feed someone/thing up) British Give a person or animal large amounts of food: you look as though you need feeding up...- I expect they will be fed up until they're big enough to sell for meat because the pig industry is starting to become lucrative again.
- The boat was captained by Bob and his wife, Mary, whose mission was to feed everyone up until they matched her husband's giant proportions.
- The best thing you can do for this youngster is to feed him up and then get him to sleep for a while.
1.3Provide an adequate supply of food for: the island’s simple agriculture could hardly feed its inhabitants...- The conventional wisdom is that, in order to increase food supply to feed the hungry of the world, we need to redouble efforts to modernize agriculture.
- In other words, agriculture provided labour for the new factories in the towns and, eventually, food supplies to feed the new industrial working class.
- Today, we need to fight at two ends of the spectrum - feeding the millions and ensuring what we feed them is nutritionally adequate.
1.4 [no object] ( feed on/off) Derive regular nourishment from (a particular substance): the bird feeds on cliff-top vegetation figurative his powerful mind fed off political discussion...- These may feed on different substances and so be able to coexist, or they may compete for the same substance.
- The bird usually feeds on shrimps and larvae using its huge bill to sieve food from water.
- The panic about a potential bird flu pandemic also feeds off the constant diet of food scare stories that we have been force-fed for years.
Synonyms live on, live off, exist on, subsist on, rely for nourishment on, depend on, thrive on; eat, consume, take in, have as food 1.5Give fertilizer to (a plant): feed the lawn in spring and autumn...- He hasn't fed his bent grass lawn in 10 years, and he says it looks fine.
- He said the compost in turn then goes to feed the flowers around the school.
- After they take off, Betty feeds her plants liquid fertilizer with a teaspoon of gelatin powder mixed into each gallon.
1.6Put fuel on (a fire).This fortunate outcome most likely stems form the absence of fuel to explode and feed a post-crash fire....- Sub-officer Gary Hastings said that oil and fuel in the vehicles was pooling at the base of the fire and feeding the flames.
- But when the door is opened and oxygen again feeds the fire, flames can suddenly erupt again.
1.7Encourage the growth of: I could feed my melancholy by reading Romantic poetry...- The economic growth, which in turn has fed the growth of motorised traffic, has led to the inevitable problems associated with road traffic in built-up areas.
- Hate is fed by ignorance and incompetence.
- The release of such material fed speculation that he was out to destroy the president.
Synonyms strengthen, fortify, support, bolster, reinforce, boost, augment, supplement, add to, add fuel to, fuel, encourage, gratify, minister to 1.8 informal Satisfy (a drug habit): users who commit crime to feed their habit...- And police in the city hope the minister's promise will help smash the cycle of criminals committing crime to feed drugs habits.
- The majority of drug addicts will commit crimes to feed their habit.
- Too often, people who use drugs find themselves in hospital, in poor health, or on the wrong side of the law if they have committed a crime to feed their habit.
2Supply with material or power: a radial circuit fed by a 20 amp fuse the pond is fed by a small stream...- The BASH converter in turn converts this gate pulse into a power signal that feeds the power amplifier's main supply rails.
- In B.C., wind advocates are touting its potential, and the first wind farm feeding the power grid in B.C. could be up and running by October 2005.
- The retaining wall of the rivulet feeding the Gaj Power Project was also breached.
2.1Put into a machine: the programs are fed into the computer Kevin fed coins into the jukebox...- Since the details of the building are fed into the machine, the computer also offers tips on the estimated cost and the quantity of paint required for the job.
- The ballots were fed into another machine for tabulation.
- This would then be fed into ACR's machine, which can create more precise shapes than most prototypers.
2.2Insert further coins into (a meter) to extend the time for which it operates.All in all, not a cheerful day except for the one time when I exchanged a few words with a woman in the carpark, she seeking ten pence coins to feed the meter....- The Parking Meter bonus brings five free spins, and when coins appear on the reels to feed the meters, bonuses multiply.
- Unless they have a disabled badge, motorists will now be forced to leave short-stay car parks after three hours to stop them returning at three-hour intervals to feed the meter and save cash.
2.3 [with two objects] Supply (someone) with (information, ideas, etc.): I think he is feeding his old employer commercial secrets...- The more information you feed your children, the more alert they'll be when the time comes for them to use it.
- Two days before the trial, he tried to get a former employer to feed him information so he could sell himself to the jury as an international fence and get a lesser sentence.
- But we're not fed information, this is not Communist Russia, we have to do independent journalism.
Synonyms supply, provide, give, deliver, present, furnish, issue, impart, sell 2.4 [with two objects] Prompt (an actor) with (a line): you were still in the wings feeding Micky his lines...- So, via a very unique performance style, Magnani was fed her lines by a dialogue coach, and she mimicked the sounds she heard.
- If he's being fed lines in an earphone, I'd expect that he should have to listen to a longer stretch of prompt before launching into a longer phrase.
- Notice the twitchy, disoriented candidate running for re-election who has to be fed lines.
2.5(In ball games) pass (the ball) to a player.Twenty minutes later Erwin Koeman fed a long ball into Van Basten from the left, the unfortunate Kohler was penalised and thus began Holland's happy ending....- He can feed the ball around the pitch and he has a wicked strike on him.
- Seedorf, though, was beginning to exert a strong influence on the Dutch, dropping off the front players, feeding the ball into them and making himself space to control return passes.
3 [with object and adverbial of direction] Cause to pass gradually and steadily, typically through a confined space: make holes through which to feed the cables...- The fountain pen, equipped with a reusable cartridge for holding a large supply of ink to be steadily fed to the nib, was a late 19c advance on the basic metal-nibbed pen.
- I attached the stand, feeding the VGA cable through the appropriate slot, then looked for the power socket.
- The public are seeing some very skilful engineering to directly drill under the beck and feed the cables through.
3.1 [no object] ( feed through) (Of a new factor or development) begin to be effective or influential; have an impact on someone or something: it could take time for higher earnings and dividends to feed through to investors...- But the Frankfurt stock market recently hit a five-year high and there are hopes the feel-good factor could feed through to the property market.
- The higher growth in inputs used suggests that much of their impact has still to feed through into output.
- The strong commodity prices that Australia benefited from are beginning to feed through to higher consumer prices in Asia.
noun1An act of giving food, especially to animals or a baby, or of having food given to one: the baby’s morning feed...- She helped me position the babies for their first feeds.
- When women choose to breastfeed they shouldn't have to stay at home all day because their baby will need a feed.
- It is an extremely sad society if a mother has to dash off to sit in the toilet every time her baby needs a feed.
1.1 informal A meal: I gave him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes...- A hot shower, a feed of black pudding, a few pints and a big steak, together with a showing of the Peru videos, and what more could a person want.
- It stated light buffet on the tickets, if that was a light buffet what on earth is a big feed in the Feehan household.
- That's a great price for a big feed and all steak fans around York should consider a trip to sample this restaurant's speciality.
Synonyms meal, lunch, dinner, supper, repast; feast, banquet; British tea informal spread, blowout, binge British informal nosh, nosh-up, scoff, tuck-in formal refection, collation 1.2 [mass noun] Food for domestic animals: the crops are grown for animal feed cow feed...- He kills wildlife - birds, deer, kangaroo, and all kinds of cat, rabbits, mice and foxes - by the million to protect his domestic animals and their feed.
- The low-quality dates and the date pits are used as animal feed for cows and sheep.
- BSE is not a contagious disease but occurs when cows eat feed that contains infected animal products.
Synonyms fodder, food, foodstuff, forage, pasturage, herbage, silage formal comestibles, provender 2A device or pipe for supplying material to a machine: a paper feed...- These parameters are used by the system controller to determine the rotational speed and the vertical feed of the machine spindle.
- Additional standpipe feeds for the water sprinkler system were installed.
- The largest is the drawer machine which has 4 feeds and knits from four bobbins.
2.1The supply of raw material to a machine or device: [as modifier]: a feed pipe...- Iron bed rollers were supplied on the hand feed machine.
- The rubber grinding machine includes a feed tube, a grinding module, a conveyor, a screening module and a vacuum system.
- The printer takes only 250 sheets of letter paper at a time, with legal paper usable only via its manual feed front paper slot.
2.2A broadcast distributed by a satellite or network from a central source to a large number of radio or television stations: a satellite feed from Washington...- The live feed was also broadcast globally by the Sirius satellite radio network.
- Other channels are audio feeds of television stations.
- The hourly news bulletins on weekdays are feeds from Independent Radio News.
2.3 Computing A facility for notifying the user of a blog or other frequently updated website that new content has been added: most blogs and news sites offer RSS feeds of their latest content...- All I'm doing is changing my Twitter feed.
- You can even set a refresh rate based on the individual feed.
- I thus can repeat the above commands with the syndication feed from my Weblog.
3A line or prompt given to an actor on stage.Simon needed our kid to speak up and give him the feed line of ‘no’ so he could deliver his line and then subsequent cheap shot. 3.1An actor who gives a feed to a fellow performer.I don't count - I'm only a feed. PhrasesPhrasal verbsOriginOld English fēdan (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch voeden and food. Rhymesaccede, bead, Bede, bleed, breed, cede, concede, creed, deed, Eid, exceed, Gide, God speed, greed, he'd, heed, impede, interbreed, intercede, Jamshid, knead, lead, mead, Mede, meed, misdeed, mislead, misread, need, plead, proceed, read, rede, reed, Reid, retrocede, screed, secede, seed, she'd, speed, stampede, steed, succeed, supersede, Swede, tweed, weak-kneed, we'd, weed |