pabulumn.

1601 P. Holland tr. Pliny Hist. World I. xvii. xxii. 534 A kind of forage or provender for horses, which the Latins in old time named Pabulum.]

a1661 T. Fuller Worthies (1662) Rutland. 346 Where horses (if their pabulum so plenty as their stabulum stately) were the best accommodated in England.

1733 J. Tull Horse-hoing Husbandry i. 4 Roots must search out and fetch themselves all the Pabulum of a Plant.

1767 Philos. Trans. 1766 (Royal Soc.) 56 196 The variety of particles of different qualities..might be drawn into the lungs, to be insinuated into the mass of blood.., to contribute refined pabulum to the finer parts of it.

1813 H. Davy Elements Agric. Chem. i. 16 No one principle affords the pabulum of vegetable life.

1845 R. B. Todd & W. Bowman Physiol. Anat. I. 43 The blood is the immediate pabulum of the tissues.

1860 M. F. Maury Physical Geogr. Sea (ed. 8) x. §493 The rivers bring down and pour into the sea continually the pabulum which those organisms require.

1905 G. M. Gould Dict. New Med. Terms 109/1 The species of microbe under examination will then develop strong colonies only on those spots where the requisite pabulum is present.

1944 V. Nabokov Let. 22 Mar. in Sel. Lett. (1989) 51 I have somehow mislaid samples of plants which I brought from Utah—and namely the pabulum of two allied forms of butterflies—a thing I call vetch on which melissa breeds.

1993 William & Mary Q. 50 506 Of these four Aristotelian elements, Tull had championed earth as the essential ‘pabulum’ of plants.

1675 Minute 4 Nov. in T. Birch Hist. Royal Soc. (1757) III. 229 Mr. Hooke..explained a mechanical contrivance to supply the pabulum of a lamp in the same degree it is consumed.

1694 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 18 207 If it be enquired into, what share the oyl has in producing this fire, whether only it be a pabulum, or fewel, for the spirit to actuate, and so be meerly passive?

1744 G. Berkeley Siris (ESTC T72826) §197 Oil, air, or any other thing that vulgarly passeth for a pabulum or food of that element [fire].

1753 Philos. Trans. 1751–2 (Royal Soc.) 47 412 Why does this subterraneous caldron boil over only at certain periods of time? And whence is it supplied with combustible pabulum for many hundreds or thousands of years?

1804 Edinb. Rev. 3 309 Every new rock which serves as pabulum to the volcanic fire, by varying its aliment, changes its produce.

1860 F. W. Farrar Ess. Origin Lang. v. 105 A necessary pabulum of combustion.

1708 W. Henley Let. in Swift's Lett. (1767) I. 20 But this I know is too gross a pabulum for one, who..has always hitherto lived on wit.

1765 L. Sterne Life Tristram Shandy VII. xxxi. 115 Such a story affords more pabulum to the brain, than all the Frusts, and Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity.

1819 G. Crabbe Tales of Hall I. x. 261 An age..when tales of love Form the sweet pabulum our hearts approve.

1845 N. P. Willis Dashes at Life with Free Pencil iv. 213 I say nothing of the pabulum of rural influences on your mind, but will just hint at another incidental advantage you may not have thought of.

1888 ‘M. Robertson’ Lombard St. Myst. iii. 34 To furnish..more pabulum for reflection and rumination.

1906 ‘O. Henry’ Four Million 100 His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature.

1944 M. McLuhan Let. 23 Dec. (1987) 166 His failure to grasp current society..cuts him off from the relevant pabulum.

1992 India Internat. Centre Q. 19 38 The fruit of knowledge is poison only when it is not transmuted by us into the pabulum of wisdom.

1973 Nature 27 Apr. 582/3 A pabulum of romanticized science digested to gibberish for consumption by pre-adolescents.

1977 A. Carter Passion of New Eve iii. 39 The radio in the car fed me an aural pabulum of cheapjack heartbreak.

1987 Golf World Aug. 59/1 His forthright answers are a refreshing change from the evasive, sugarcoated pabulum we are so used to swallowing from our sports heroes.

2003 Sun (Baltimore) (Nexis) 22 June 10 f It is a process that drains literature of its life and blood, converts it into dreary reading materials, and grinds reading materials into pabulum.