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FEED ON
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Be sustained by
Example:
He fed on the great ideas of her mentor
Synonyms:
feed on; feed upon
Classified under:
Hypernyms (to "feed on" is one way to...):
conform to; fill; fit; fulfil; fulfill; meet; satisfy (fill, satisfy or meet a want or need or condtion ro restriction)
Sentence frame:
Somebody ----s something
Context examples:
The bacteria are found mainly in rats and in the fleas that feed on them.
(Plague, NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
Plastic is not the natural food of the wax worm, but researchers say that since they lay their eggs in beehives, the hatchlings feed on beeswax.
(Plastic Eating Worm Could Help Ease Pollution, VOA)
Elephants aren't often seen in the area of the trees McConkey studied, but as she told VOA, "I thought if I'm going to see them feed on any fruit, it's going to be this one."
(Thai Elephants Help Spread Jungle Fruit's Seeds, Sadie Witkowski/VOA)
Therefore, they explored the potential of using light to control mosquitoes’ feeding behaviour by exposing Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes — a key vector of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa — to multiple pulses of bright light, especially in the night, when they are most likely to feed on human blood.
(Shining light at night quells mosquito bites, SciDev.Net)
Peering into the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has spotted a mysterious glow of high-energy X-rays that, according to scientists, could be the howls of dead stars as they feed on stellar companions.
(NASA's NuSTAR Captures Possible 'Screams' from Zombie Stars, NASA)
He was returning to Mansfield with spirits ready to feed on melancholy remembrances, and tender associations, when her own fair self was before him, leaning on her brother's arm, and he found himself receiving a welcome, unquestionably friendly, from the woman whom, two moments before, he had been thinking of as seventy miles off, and as farther, much farther, from him in inclination than any distance could express.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
These findings are very important for our understanding of oceanic food webs because the variety and turnover rate of the plankton communities mean that larger organisms which feed on the plankton will come into contact with different sets of microbes that could contain pathogens and harmful microorganisms.
(Study by UGR and MIT reveals microbial plankton live in complex communities, University of Granada)
