feast
/fiːst
/noun
1A large meal, typically a celebratory one: a wedding feast...
- Traditional elements of the festival, including the gourmet dinner, restaurant meal deals and roving feasts, will remain.
- We collect donations and the leftovers of wedding feasts and feed the poor.
- Medieval banquets, Viking feasts, dinner parties, wedding ceremonies, conferences and exhibitions: you name it, this venue can do it.
Synonyms
banquet, celebration meal, lavish dinner, sumptuous repast, large meal, formal meal, formal dinner;
treat, entertainment, jollification;
revels, festivities
informal blowout, feed, junket, spread, binge, bash, do
British informal nosh-up, beanfeast, bunfight, beano, scoff, slap-up meal, tuck-in
1.1A plentiful supply of something enjoyable: the concert season offers a feast of classical music...
- The week will then offer a feast of music and poetry.
- While the game didn't offer a feast of goals for fans back home to enjoy during their World Cup breakfast, it was a case of the result counting for far more than the performance.
- In Italy, spring offers a feast of events for the art lover.
Synonyms
treat, delight, joy, pleasure, gratification
2An annual religious celebration: [as modifier]: a feast day
2.1A day dedicated to a particular saint: the feast of St John...
- In Russian tradition, name days - feasts of major saints - are more important than birthdays.
- The most distinctive buildings, events, customs, and ideas are Catholic, from the many community churches and chapels, to the saints' days' feasts, to the week-long wakes in the homes of the dead.
- The biggest holiday among Basques is the feast of their patron saint, Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.
Synonyms
festival, religious festival, feast day, saint's day, holy day, holiday, fete, festivity, celebration
2.2British An annual village festival: the feast was the highlight of the village year...
- At Kelfield, near Selby, locals got a good soaking in a medieval ducking stool - a star attraction at the annual village feast held on Saturday.
- The growing community spirit is also set to lead to the resurrection next June of the annual village feast, which was last held in the 1930s.
- Festivals were holidays and feasts and the Church even said there should be no fasting on such days.
verb [no object]
1Eat and drink sumptuously: the men would congregate and feast after hunting...
- They shared, according to Tacitus, a war orientated Teutonic lifestyle with a veneration for the portentous powers of sage women and a predilection for feasting and drinking to excess.
- The assistant peered through the window and saw a group of people feasting, drinking, and reveling.
- There, musicians played and people danced and sang and drank and feasted.
Synonyms
gorge on, dine on, eat one's fill of, indulge in, overindulge in;
eat, devour, consume, partake of;
banquet
informal binge on, binge-eat, stuff one's face with, stuff oneself with, stuff down, shovel down, wolf down, pig oneself on, pig out on, make a pig of oneself on, cram in, tuck into, put away, pack away, make short work of, get outside of, get one's laughing gear round
British informal gollop, shift
North American informal snarf
rare gourmandize
1.1 (feast on) Eat large quantities of: we sat feasting on barbecued chicken and beer...
- I'm lucky, for I've got an invite to a bash in the Drill Hall where I spend the night dancing, drinking and feasting on mutton soup, pies and sandwiches.
- In the summer they have parties on each allotment in turn, feasting on barbecues and getting sloshed on homemade wines.
- But, whereas the vast majority of youngsters tucked into chips and feasted on cake, fresh fruit and yoghurts were not as popular.
1.2 [with object] Give (someone) a plentiful and delicious meal: they feasted the deputation...
- It was at these capitals where the chief would feast his people after collecting very beautiful and attractive sand, which he spread around the palace.
- In ancient times, before a battle, a general would feast his soldiers with alcohol and meat.
- The night before Greatgrandfather left, the village feasted him and sang music and poured jugs of beer over his head.
Synonyms
hold a banquet for, throw a feast for, wine and dine, ply with food and drink, give someone a meal, feed, cater for;
entertain lavishly, regale, treat, fete, throw a party for, play host to
Phrases
ghost (or skeleton) at the feast
feast one's eyes on
feast or famine
Derivatives
feaster
/ noun ...- It can be seen in the way in which animals for slaughter may be placed in order around the altar, or, alternatively, the prospective feasters may arrange themselves around a single animal.
- The animals provide a high level of nutrition for the feasters, and the act of eating them is a sharing of flesh and blood.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French feste (noun), fester (verb), from Latin festa, neuter plural of festus 'joyous'. Compare with fete and fiesta.
People have been celebrating special occasions with a feast since the Middle Ages, and appropriately the word goes back to Latin festus meaning ‘joyous’. Festival (Middle English) derives from the closely related Latin word festivus. A festoon (mid 17th century) comes from the same root, being at first a festival ornament. In the Christian Church the date of some festivals like Easter, known as movable feasts, varies from year to year. A skeleton at the feast is someone or something who casts gloom on what should be a happy occasion. This goes back to a story told in the 5th century bc by the Greek historian Herodotus. In ancient Egypt a painted carving of a body in a coffin was carried round the room at parties, and shown to guests with the warning that this was how they would be one day.