A repast is a meal, in formal or old use. A light repast, share a repast, after the repast.
It is archaic and used now mainly for effect or in mock formality — nobody orders a repast. It suggests a proper sit-down meal rather than a snack. Note that the French comes from a verb meaning to feed, from the Latin pascere, which also gives pasture and pastor.
1nounrepastA meal.
“After the service, the guests sat down to a simple repast of bread, cheese and soup.”
repast is a meal.
Old French repast comes from repaistre, to feed, from Latin pascere, to feed. Pasture and pastor come from the same feeding.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂-
Old French
repast
Middle English
repast
English, today
repast
Built from
From Middle English repast, repaste (“feast, meal; food, nourishment; the Eucharist; refreshment, rest”)repaast, repaaste, repaest, from Anglo-Norman -, Middle French -, Old French repast, Middle French -, Old French repas (“meal, repast; spiritual nourishment”) (modern French repas), probably from Medieval Latin -, Latin repastus (“meal”), from repāstus, the perfect passive participle of repāscō (“to feed; to feed one after another”), from Latin re- + pāscō (“to feed, nourish; to pasture (an animal); of an animal: to browse, graze; to maintain, support”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European peh₂- (“to protect; to shepherd”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA