Other forms: foods
Food is anything people or animals eat to stay alive. Buy food, cook food, run out of food.
It is uncountable in general use — not much food — and countable when it means kinds: spicy foods, processed foods. Food bank, food poisoning, food chain and food for thought are the standard compounds. Note comfort food; fast food; the food chain, both the ecological term and the office metaphor; and that food security, meaning reliable access to enough of it, is now a standard policy phrase.
1nounfoodAnything people or animals eat to stay alive.~65%
“They ran out of food on about the fourth day.”
2nounparticularA particular kind of thing eaten.~35%
“Processed foods make up about half of what most people eat.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
food is what is eaten.
Old English foda comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to feed or graze, which also gives Latin pascere, to feed, and so pasture, pastor and repast. A pastor is a feeder of a flock in the same word.
Middle English
fode
English, today
food
From Middle English fode. From Middle English fode, foode, from Old English fōda (“food”), from Proto-West Germanic fōdō, from Proto-Germanic fōdô (“food”), from Proto-Indo-European peh₂- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Cognate with Scots fuid (“food”), Low German föde, vöde (“food”), West Frisian fiedsel (“food”), Dutch voedsel (“food”) Danish føde (“food”), Swedish föda (“food”), Icelandic fæða, fæði (“food”), Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐌳𐌴𐌹𐌽𐍃 (“food”), Latin pānis (“bread, food”), Latin pāscō (“feed, nourish”). Related to fodder, foster.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA