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excites the feelings, or molds habits of character; that which nourishes. This may prove food to my displeasure. Shak. In this moment there is life and food For future years. Wordsworth.

Full of food; supplying food; fruitful; fertile. "The foodful earth." Dryden. Bent by its foodful burden [the corn]. Glover.

Without food; barren. Sandys.

Eatable; fruitful. [R.] Chapman.

Prodigal expense for food. [Obs.] Bailey.

Sparing in diet; refraining from a free use of food and strong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions. Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious. Arbuthnot.

The quality of being abstemious, temperate, or sparing in the use of food and strong drinks. It expresses a greater degree of abstinence than temperance.

The practice of self-denial by depriving one's self of certain kinds of food or drink, especially of meat. Penance, fasts, and abstinence, To punish bodies for the soul's offense. Dryden.

esired or needful; -- often in the plural; as, the accomodations -- that is, lodgings and food -- at an inn. Sir W. Scott.

To exert power; to produce an effect; as, the stomach acts upon food.

base, or make impure by an admixture of a foreign or a baser substance; as, to adulterate food, drink, drugs, coin, etc. The present war has . . . adulterated our tongue with strange words. Spectator.

The act of adulterating; corruption, or debasement (esp. of food or drink) by foreign mixture. The shameless adulteration of the coin. Prescott.

ically. Should they [caterpillars] affix them to the leaves of a plant improper for their food. Ray.

To suit or be adapted in its effects; to do well; as, the same food does not agree with every constitution.

Agricultural ant (Zoöl.), a species of ant which gathers and stores seeds of grasses, for food. The remarkable species (Myrmica barbata) found in Texas clears circular areas and carefully cultivates its favorite grain, known as ant rice.

Applied to those ova which segment uniformly, and which have little or no food yelk embedded in their protoplasm. Balfour.

That which nourishes; food; nutriment; anything which feeds or adds to a substance in natural growth. Hence: The necessaries of life generally: sustenance; means of support. Aliments of theiBacon.

Supplying food; having the quality of nourishing; furnishing the materials for natural growth; as, alimental sap.

So as to serve for nourishment or food; nourishing quality. Sir T. Browne.

Pertaining to aliment or food, or to the function of nutrition; nutritious; alimental; as, alimentary substances. Alimentary canal, the entire channel, extending from the mouth to the anus, by which aliments are conveyed through the body, and the useless parts ejected.