aliment

aliment

—n
1.	something that nourishes or sustains the body or mind
2.	Scots law another term for alimony

—vb
3.	obsolete (tr) to support or sustain

[C15: from Latin alimentum food, from alere to nourish]

ali'mental

—*adj*

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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

aliment

"food," late 15c., from L. alimentum "nourishment, food," from alere "to nourish" (see alimentary).

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

aliment al·i·ment (āl'ə-mənt)
n.

Something that nourishes; food.
Something that supports or sustains.

v. al·i·ment·ed, al·i·ment·ing, al·i·ments
To supply with sustenance, such as food.

Matching Quote

"We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked,—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are, indeed, so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives."

-Henry David Thoreau

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Related Words

adult alimentation alimentative

alimony altricial food