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That which serves to nourish; nutriment; food. Learn to seek the nourishment of their souls. Hooker.

A plant growing entirely in the air, and receiving its nourishment from it; an air plant or epiphyte.

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

or incorporate into the substance of the assimilating body; to absorb or appropriate, as nourishment; as, food is assimilated and converted into organic tissue. Hence also animals and vegetables may assimilate their nourishment. Sir I. Newton. His mind had no power to assimilate the lessons. Merivale.…

A wasting away from want of nourishment; diminution in bulk or slow emaciation of the body or of any part. Milton.

Capable of self-nourishment; -- said of all plants in which photosynthetic activity takes place, as opposed to parasitism or saprophytism.

A place where the nourishment and care of babies are offered for hire.

The fluid which circulates in the principal vascular system of animals, carrying nourishment to all parts of the body, and bringing away waste products to be excreted. See under Arterial.

thorax in the female of man and of some other mammalia, in which milk is secreted for the nourishment of the young; a mammma; a teat. My brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother. Cant. viii. 1.

To digest; to convert into nourishment by the organs of nutrition. [Obs.] Food is concocted, the heart beats, the blood circulates. Cheyne.

r or mustard; seasoning. As for radish and the like, they are for condiments, and not for nourishment. Bacon.

Undigested; unconcocted; not brought into a form to give nourishment. "Crude and inconcoct." Bacon.

Course of living or nourishment; what is eaten and drunk habitually; food; victuals; fare. "No inconvenient diet." Milton.

k or hang down, as an animal, plant, etc., from physical inability or exhaustion, want of nourishment, or the like. "The purple flowers droop." "Above her drooped a lamp." Tennyson. I saw him ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish. Swift.

An injection, or clyster, thrown into the rectum as a medicine, or to impart nourishment. Hoblyn.

An air plant which grows on other plants, but does not derive its nourishment from them. See Air plant.

The faculty possessed by all substances capable of self- nourishment of manifesting the nutritive acts by changes of form, of volume, or of structure. Syd. Soc. Lex.

To abstain from food; to omit to take nourishment in whole or in part; to go hungry. Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked. Milton.

To give food to; to supply with nourishment; to satisfy the physical huger of. If thine enemy hunger, feed him. Rom. xii. 20. Unreasonable reatures feed their young. Shak.

One who, or that which, gives food or supplies nourishment; steward. A couple of friends, his chaplain and feeder. Goldsmith.