födan

Födan is a Swedish noun meaning food or nourishment. It refers to the sustenance required for living beings and is used for both humans and animals in broad, sometimes literary, contexts. The definite form födan is used when speaking of “the food” in a general sense or of provisions. In everyday language, mat is more common for meals, while födan is found in formal writing or when discussing nourishment as a concept or necessity.

In agricultural contexts, födan can mean the feed supplied to livestock, but the term foder is the more precise technical word for animal feed. Födan can also appear in ecological or historical texts to denote the food base of a species or the diet of organisms, synonymous with föda or näring in some contexts.

Etymology: the word is related to föda, from Old Norse and other Germanic languages, originally meaning nourishment or provisioning. The form födan is the definite singular.

See also: föda, foder, näring, mat, kost.