| Library / English Dictionary |
NOURISHMENT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of nourishing
Example:
her nourishment of the orphans saved many lives
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("nourishment" is a kind of...):
aid; attention; care; tending (the work of providing treatment for or attending to someone or something)
Derivation:
nourish (give nourishment to)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A source of materials to nourish the body
Synonyms:
aliment; alimentation; nourishment; nutriment; nutrition; sustenance; victuals
Classified under:
Nouns denoting foods and drinks
Hypernyms ("nourishment" is a kind of...):
food; nutrient (any substance that can be metabolized by an animal to give energy and build tissue)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "nourishment"):
milk (produced by mammary glands of female mammals for feeding their young)
course (part of a meal served at one time)
dainty; delicacy; goody; kickshaw; treat (something considered choice to eat)
dish (a particular item of prepared food)
fast food (inexpensive food (hamburgers or chicken or milkshakes) prepared and served quickly)
finger food (food to be eaten with the fingers)
ingesta (solid and liquid nourishment taken into the body through the mouth)
kosher (food that fulfills the requirements of Jewish dietary law)
meal; repast (the food served and eaten at one time)
mess (soft semiliquid food)
mince (food chopped into small bits)
puree (food prepared by cooking and straining or processed in a blender)
stodge (heavy and filling (and usually starchy) food)
wheat germ (embryo of the wheat kernel; removed before milling and eaten as a source of vitamins)
vitamin (any of a group of organic substances essential in small quantities to normal metabolism)
Derivation:
nourish (provide with nourishment)
Context examples:
I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry Janet!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs, to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It is structurally continuous with the sclera, is avascular, receiving its nourishment by permeation through spaces between the lamellae, and is innervated by the ophthalmic division of the trigeminal nerve via the ciliary nerves and those of the surrounding conjunctiva which together form plexuses.
(Murine Cornea, NCI Thesaurus)
Their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden and the milk of one cow, which gave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The man knew there was no nourishment in the berries, but he chewed them patiently with a hope greater than knowledge and defying experience.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will strains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
