feed
part of speech
verb (feed, feeds, fed, feeding); noun (feed — food for animals; a feed — a meal; a feed — a stream of online posts)
meaning for a pupil
1) To give food to a person or animal: "Feed the cat." tree →
2) For animals, to eat: "Cows feed on grass." tree →
3) To supply something to a machine or a place: "feed paper into the printer". tree →
4) As a noun, food for animals: "chicken feed". tree →
5) As a noun, a list of new posts on a website or app. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science, animals "feed on" other living things (food chains: the owl feeds on mice). In pet care: feed pets the right food at the right times; don't feed wild animals human food. In online safety: a "feed" shows posts — not all are true. Phrases: feed on, fed up (bored or annoyed), breastfeed, bird feeder.
examples
- Please feed the dog before school. tree →
- Caterpillars feed on leaves. tree →
- Don't feed bread to the ducks. tree →
- I'm fed up with the rain. tree →
- Feed the paper into the printer. tree →
- The farmer bought feed for the chickens. tree →
- Mother birds feed their chicks. tree →
- Her news feed was full of cat videos. tree →
- You and I don't feed alike." tree →
note
Past "fed" (not "feeded"). "Fed up" means bored or annoyed. "Feed on" means eat, often in science. In maths, "feeds 3 cats with 2 cans each" = 3 × 2 = 6 cans.
In the corpora
- A newborn baby needs feeding every two or three hours, day and night, because its stomach is tiny.
- Babies feed from the breast or a bottle, often for twenty minutes or more, and they need calm to settle.
- The idea that goldfish remember things for only 3 seconds is a myth: experiments show they remember feeding times and tricks for months.
- City animals are wild animals, so watch them, but do not feed, chase or touch them.
- Whales are mammals: they breathe air, are warm-blooded, give birth to live young and feed them milk.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «feed» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.