fed

Pluralfeds

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of feed.

   The ranchers fed their cattle extra hay through the storm.

   By midnight the kitchen had fed over three hundred guests.

   Note

   One irregular form does two jobs: they fed the cattle, and the cattle have been fed. The vowel shortens from feed, and no -ed ending is added. Every use of feed carries over, including the machine sense (the printer was fed paper) and the figurative one (praise that fed his vanity). The passive is especially common with the machine sense.

2. 2
   nounslangderogatorycountable

   A derogatory slang term for an officer or official of the federal government.

   The feds raided the compound before sunrise and arrested six people.

   She was convinced the fed at the next table was recording the meeting.

   Note

   A clipping of federal, and the short form carries an attitude: it is the word of people who distrust the agents it names. It is slang and derogatory, so it is unsafe in neutral writing. It often appears as a collective plural, the feds. Robert Evans, on Twitter in 2020, draws the line the word implies: these are not cops. In London slang, the word for police in general blurs that line.

3. 3
   noundialectalMulticultural London Englishcountable

   A slang term for a member of the police.

   A fed pulled her over for a broken taillight.

   The feds set up a sobriety checkpoint outside the bar.

   Similarcop, copper, bobby, fuzz, bull

   Note

   Multicultural London English took the word for federal agents and dropped the "federal": here any police officer is a fed, local officers included. When Jasmine York led chants against the feds outside Bristol's Bridewell police station in 2022, the target was the city's own police. Outside this dialect, listeners will hear the federal-agent slang instead, so the speaker's community decides the meaning.

4. 4
   nounabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of federation. Informal, chiefly for a professional wrestling promotion.

   The fed announced its title match for next month.

   After years on the independent circuit, she finally signed with a major fed.

   Note

   The general-purpose clipping can stand for federation in any of its uses: a body formed from member groups, a union of states under one authority, or a set of network providers that interoperate. It takes the ordinary plural, feds. Because the slang for federal agents shares the spelling, context does the sorting: a title match or a merger points to a federation, and a raid points to an agent.

5. 5
   nounCanadaplural

   The Canadian federal government, treated as a single governing body.

   The Feds announced new transfer payments to the provinces this week.

   Each premier lobbied the Fed for disaster relief funding.

   SimilarOttawa

   Note

   Canadian usage turns the agents into the institution: in the plural, the feds means the national government itself, as when the feds step in to save a river's salmon. Treat it as a plural noun (the feds have acted, not the fed has). It belongs to everyday Canadian talk about Ottawa's role rather than to official prose, where "the federal government" is the safer choice.

6. 6
   nounslangcountable

   In powerlifting, a federation that organizes lifters and runs competitions for them.

   He chose a drug-tested fed for his first competition.

   Several feds use slightly different standards for judging squat depth.

   Similarfederation

   Note

   Powerlifting's word for a sanctioning body. It is cut from federation rather than federal, so it has nothing to do with government. Lifters talk about which fed they compete in, because feds differ in their rules, their weight classes and whether they test for drugs. It is insider slang. When writing for people outside the sport, federation is clearer.

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