The evolution of "Feed"

Pre-1150 (Old English) fēdan: "to nourish, give food to, sustain" — the base verb, from Proto-Germanic *fōdjan, ultimately PIE *peh₂- ("to guard, graze, feed"). 1570s–1580s (agriculture/animals/plants) First noun use of "feed" (1575, George Gascoigne): fodder given to livestock. Still the everyday sense today ("chicken feed"). This branch stays agricultural — it's not the one that leads to "news feed." 1660s (mechanics — the branch that matters) "Feeder" as a mechanical apparatus for conveying material into a machine. This is the actual ancestor of every later technical sense: not "feeding" as in nourishment, but "feeding" as in material moving continuously through a system, unattended. 1790s (streams) Extended to watercourses that supply a larger body of water ("feeder stream") — the same idea applied to nature: a smaller continuous source feeding a larger one. 1850s (infrastructure) Applied to roads and railroads that channel traffic into a larger route ("feeder road/line"). 1892…