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To make fertile or enrich; to supply with nourishment for plants; to make fruitful or productive; as, to fertilize land, soil, ground, and meadows. And fertilize the field that each pretends to gain. Byron.

ism of an animal or a plant; nutriment; aliment; especially, what is eaten by animals for nourishment.

Relating to nourishment; affording, receiving, or sharing nourishment or nurture; -- applied to father, mother, child, brother, etc., to indicate that the person so called stands in the relation of parent, child, brother, etc., as regards sustenance and nurture, but not by tie of blood. Foster babe, or child, an infant…

Food; nourishment. [Obs.]

Whatever is produced for the nourishment or enjoyment of man or animals by the processes of vegetable growth, as corn, grass, cotton, flax, etc.; -- commonly used in the plural. Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof. Ex. xxiii. 10.

Affording no aliment or nourishment. [Obs.] Bacon.

To produce inanition in; to exhaust for want of nourishment. [R.]

Want of nutrition; failure of nourishment. E. Darwin.

Not nutritious; not furnishing nourishment.

nd-like forms, but sometimes erect or pendulous and variously branched. They derive their nourishment from the air, and generate by means of spores. The species are very widely distributed, and form irregular spots or patches, usually of a greenish or yellowish color, upon rocks, trees, and various bodies, to which the…

Food, in general; anything eaten for nourishment, either by man or beast. Hence, the edible part of anything; as, the meat of a lobster, a nut, or an egg. Chaucer. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, . . . to you it shall be for meat. Gen. i. 29. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat…

A white fluid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals for the nourishment of their young, consisting of minute globules of fat suspended in a solution of casein, albumin, milk sugar, and inorganic salts. "White as morne milk." Chaucer.

be necessitated; -- expressing either physical or moral necessity; as, a man must eat for nourishment; we must submit to the laws.

To gain nourishment. [R.] Bacon.

Capable of giving nourishment. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

Supplying or taking nourishment from, or as from, the breast; as, a nursing mother; a nursing infant.

Nutrition; nourishment. [Obs.] Harvey.

The means of nutriment to animals or plants; food; nourishment; hence, that which feeds or sustains, as fuel for a fire; that upon which the mind or soul is nourished; as, intellectual pabulum.

Nourishment or support from official patronage; as, treasury pap. [Colloq. & Contemptuous]

A plant obtaining nourishment immediately from other plants to which it attaches itself, and whose juices it absorbs; -- sometimes, but erroneously, called epiphyte.