nutrition
- 1The biological process by which a living organism takes in food and uses it for growth and maintenance.
Like a furnace turning fuel into heat and motion, the body turns food into growth and energy.
Proper nutrition supports tissue repair after surgery.
Marine biologists study how deep-sea creatures obtain nutrition in near-total darkness.
Similarnourishment
Note
A biologist's word for one of the functions that mark a living body. John Barclay, in 1822, lists it beside respiration, digestion and circulation as what a dead body no longer does. It came through Middle and Old French from Latin nutritio. In this technical use it names the whole process, not the food itself, and it is usually uncountable: you speak of an organism's nutrition, not its nutritions.
- 2The nourishing matter contained in food; nutriment that sustains life and growth.
The watery soup was warm but offered almost no real nutrition.
Breast milk provides nearly all the nutrition a newborn needs in its first months.
Similarnourishment, sustenance
Note
Here the word moves from the process to the stuff that feeds it, which is why it takes words of quantity: extra nutrition, almost no nutrition, all the nutrition a newborn needs. An uncle's joke that a worm in an apple adds nourishment turns on exactly this sense. Nutriment is its close synonym. A quick test: if you can ask how much, you are not using the biological process.
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Origin
Borrowed from Middle French "nutrition," which came from Old French "nutricion," from Latin "nutritio."