A News Feed Is Named After Animal Fodder
To feed is to give food. Computing borrowed the word for a stream of incoming content.
To feed is to give food to a person or animal; a feed is the food given, or a stream of supplied material. The metaphor runs through machinery and then computing: paper is fed into a press, wire is fed into a machine, and a news feed supplies a continuous stream to be consumed. The image of eating is deliberate in all of them. *Feedback* began as an engineering term for output routed back into a system, and moved to conversation only afterwards.
- To give food. *Feed the cat.*
- Animal fodder. *Cattle feed.*
- A content stream. *A news feed.*
- Feedback — output returned. *Feedback.*
- Old English — *fedan*. *The source.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | feed | Feeding. |
| Past | fed | Fed. |
| Noun | feed | A feed. |
| Compound | feedback | Feedback. |
| Related | food | Food. |
- She fed the chickens.Animals.
- Paper feeds into the press.Machinery.
- Scroll through the feed.Computing.
How feed reached computing
- Animals are fed fodder, the oldest sense
- Machines are fed material to work on
- Line feed moved paper up in a printer
- Data feed supplied a continuous stream
- News feed kept the eating metaphor intact
Old English *fedan*, to feed, from the same root as *food*.
Why is a stream of posts called a feed?
From the metaphor of supplying material continuously, as fodder is supplied to animals or paper to a machine.
Where does feedback come from?
Engineering, where it meant routing part of a system's output back into its input. The conversational sense came later.