English

Noun

pabulation ‎(uncountable)

1. (obsolete, rare) The act of eating or feeding.
   • 1848, George Francklin Atkinson, Pictures from the North, in Pen and Pencil: Sketched during a Summer Ramble, John Ollivier (publisher), page 205:

     The bell rings, and the herd rush violently down into a steep place in the fore part of the vessel, and the Captain amuses us while the pabulation is going on.

   • 1859, T. W. J. Connolly, The Romance of the Ranks, Volume 1, Longman et al. (publishers), page 142:

     Satisfied of this, Scobell commenced to fatten his comrade for another medical inspection, […] A week or two was enough for the process of pabulation; […]

   • 1878, J. Turnbull Thomson, Social Problems: An Inquiry into the Law of Influences, C. Kegan Paul & Co., page 244:

     […] the country squire winces under the nauseous outpourings which are gulped as nectar by his shepherds and ploughmen. Again, the pabulation that would suit the squire, the shepherds and ploughmen would reject as dry and lifeless fetid bones.

   • 1885 May, Hiram Christopher, “The Place in Creation and the Work in the Economy of Nature of Micro-Organisms”, in The Saint Louis Medical & Surgical Journal, Volume 48, Number 5, page 365:

     What is formed into tissue or structure becomes, in turn, pabulum for others, and so on until all the elements which make up one organism, are finally restored to their original realm through the ceaseless round of pabulation.

   • 1918 June, J. A. Hagemann, “An Evolutional Aspect of the Pharyngeal Lymphatics”, in Medical Review of Reviews, Volume 24, Number 6, page 246:

     The cyclostoma, as its name implies, has a circular mouth, and is, moreover, devoid of upper and lower jaws. An organism with such circumscribed capabilites for pabulation must have been limited, regarding its food supply, to stagnant slush that was brought near its stoma by friendly undulations of an emulsifying watery medium.

Related terms

• pabulum