feast

UK/ˈfiːst/US/ˈfiːst/

nounB13 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,111 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: feasts, feasting, feasted

A feast is an enormous meal laid on for a special day, with far more food than anyone can finish. A long table down the middle of the hall, three kinds of meat, plates going from hand to hand, someone standing up halfway through to make a speech.

Feast is a verb as well: they feasted on roast lamb and cold beer until midnight. It keeps a religious meaning too — a feast day is a day the church sets aside for a saint, as in the Feast of St Nicholas, and a moveable feast is one whose date shifts each year, or loosely any plan that keeps changing. Feast your eyes on this invites someone to look at something wonderful. Feast or famine describes work or money that arrives all at once or not at all. A banquet is formal and organised; a feast is generous and a little out of control.

Definitions of feast

1nounfeastA large special meal for a lot of people, held to celebrate something.B1~10%
“The wedding feast went on until three in the morning.”
- Said"You've made a feast! We'll never get through all this."
- WrittenWedding feasts lasted until dawn, and the village talked about them for a year.
- UsedPlan a feast around one big dish and let the rest be simple.
- ContrastA feast, not a meal. A meal is any sitting; a feast is a table groaning for a reason. meal →
- Not thisA large takeaway on a weeknight is not a feast. A feast marks something and is shared.
- SimplyIt is a feast. There is food for all of us.
Patterna wedding / harvest feast · hold / prepare a feast · feast on + noun · a feast for the eyes
synonyms: banquet, spread
2noundayA day set aside by a church to celebrate a saint or a religious event.B2~80%
“The village holds a procession on the feast of its patron saint.”
3verbeatTo eat a great deal of good food with pleasure.B1~10%
“They feasted on everything the neighbours had brought round.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

feast is a meal.

Also accepted in games: banquet

Remember it

fEAST → a table from EAST to west

One table runs through the whole village from east to west, and every family has brought a dish: that is a feast.

hooks ontoeast

Phrases it lives in

feast your eyes on — to look at something with great pleasure
feast or famine — either far too much of something or none at all, with nothing in between

Where it comes from

Feast came through Old French feste from Latin festa, the plural of festum, a holiday or festival, and behind that sits a Proto-Indo-European word for a god, the same root that gave Greek theos. A feast was a holy day first, and the enormous meal is only what people did on it. Fête, fiesta and fest are the same word arriving in English by other roads.

Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
festa
Old French
feste
Middle English
feeste
English, today
feast

From Middle English feeste, feste, borrowed from Old French feste, from Latin festa, from the plural of Latin festum (“holiday, festival, feast”), from Proto-Italic fēs-tos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dʰéh₁s (“god, godhead, deity”); see also Ancient Greek θεός (“god, goddess”). More at theo-. a doublet of fete and fiesta and fest. winhate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, Music, Art & Culture, Weddings & Celebrations

Practise this word

feast in the wild

The traditional date for the feast is January 6.
Epiphany (holiday)
The Alawites and the Middle Eastern Christians also observe the feast on January 19.
Epiphany (holiday)
The Transfiguration is considered a major feast, numbered among the twelve Great Feasts in Byzantine Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Feast of the Transfiguration
Moscati was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1987; his feast day is 16 November.
Giuseppe Moscati
A deeply religious man, Charles was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2004, with October 21 as his feast day.
Charles I of Austria

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the festa family

feast fiesta

feast — used about once every 493 pages · #3,111 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of feast

1nounfeastA large special meal for a lot of people, held to celebrate something.B1~10%

“The wedding feast went on until three in the morning.”

Said"You've made a feast! We'll never get through all this."
WrittenWedding feasts lasted until dawn, and the village talked about them for a year.
UsedPlan a feast around one big dish and let the rest be simple.
ContrastA feast, not a meal. A meal is any sitting; a feast is a table groaning for a reason. meal →
Not thisA large takeaway on a weeknight is not a feast. A feast marks something and is shared.
SimplyIt is a feast. There is food for all of us.

Patterna wedding / harvest feast · hold / prepare a feast · feast on + noun · a feast for the eyes

synonyms: banquet, spread

2noundayA day set aside by a church to celebrate a saint or a religious event.B2~80%

“The village holds a procession on the feast of its patron saint.”

3verbeatTo eat a great deal of good food with pleasure.B1~10%

“They feasted on everything the neighbours had brought round.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

feast is a meal.

Also accepted in games: banquet