ETYMOLOGICAL MORSELS

The word food derives from its verb-form in the Proto-Germanic fodon [OE, "foda"]. That food would be a verb is only perfect. Originally meaning "to tend, to keep pasture, to protect, to guard, to feed", this only emphasizes the vital relationship between the food we love and its' labored origins.


Women singing & pounding rice (Philippines)

The word drink hails originally form the Old English dragan meaning "to draw", as in 'to draw water from a well'.

The word meal derives from the old english mael, which originally connoted "time, measure, meal". A meal is above all else an event in time; it marks time. And to mark this time with meaning, we often supplement it with song, prayer, story-telling, and conversation. A meal is not just a functional means of sustenance, but a social and cultural medium of celebration.


An outdoor community dinner (Sienna)

Breakfast (from the French disjejunare) meant literally "to break the fast" i.e. eating after having 'fasted' during slept. It has also meant "lunch". Lunch in Spanish, almuertzo, literally means "to bite into".


The Pomp Hall tenant-family (Oklahoma, 1940): cornflakes, biscuits, fried bacon, milk & coffee.

Our modern mid-day repast lunch, short for luncheon, has apparently always meant lunch.



supra gathering (Georgia)

Dinner used to mean breakfast and then later lunch. Finally the English-speaking fashionable classes of the 19th century began referring to a later meal in the evening as dinner.

Our modern portmaneau brunch was coined by a young Brit in 1896.

To make a toast originally meant "a call to drink to someone's health" (1700), and referred to the beautiful or popular woman whose health is proposed and drunk, from the use of spiced toast to flavor drink which the lady regarded as figuratively adding piquancy to the wine in which her health was drunk.


Alice Paul makes a toast to Tennessee's ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote.