Word to the Wise: Provender

"Provender" (PROV-un-dur) is another way of saying "food." The word is derived from the Latin for "a daily allowance of provisions."

Example (as used by Simon Schama in The Guardian): " Frances Trollope, Captain Marryat, Colonel Basil Hall, and Charles Dickens in 1842 all commented on the way Americans wolfed down their provender as fast as possible, cramming the cornbread in their sloppy maws and, worse, doing so in grim silence, punctuated only by the noise of slurps, grunts; scraping knives, and hacking coughs."