nourishment

Nourishment is something that nourishes—does or provides what’s needed for someone or something to be healthy and to grow and develop.

It can also refer to the act of nourishing or the state of being nourished. Nourish and nourishment are most commonly used in relation to food. Healthy food provides nourishment. Parents try to provide nourishment for their children by feeding them healthy foods. Sometimes, food is said to nourish more than the body, as in A warm, home-cooked meal is nourishment for the body and the spirit. 

However, nourishment can be used in many other contexts, including those that don’t involve food, as in educational nourishment.

In all of these senses, nourishment is a somewhat formal and perhaps poetic word—it usually refers to something that serves to sustain rather than just feed.

Example: As a mother, it’s my job to provide physical, mental, and emotional nourishment for my kids.

The first records of the word nourishment come from around 1400. The suffix -ment is used to make it a noun. Its base word, nourish, comes from the Latin verb nūtrīre, meaning “to feed” or “to care for.” The words nurture, nutrition, nutritious, and nurse are based on the same root.

Nourishment is closely associated with food, and even its senses that don’t literally involve food are usually likened to the kind of nourishment that food provides for the body. This is almost always positive: love and affection provide emotional nourishment; learning provides mental nourishment.

The word malnourishment means the same thing as malnutrition—poor nutrition caused by a lack of nourishing food.

What are some other forms related to nourishment?

• malnourishment (noun)
• nourish (verb)

What are some synonyms for nourishment?

• nutrition
• sustenance
• nurture (when nurture is used as a noun)
• cultivation

What are some words that share a root or word element with nourishment? 

• nurture
• nutrition
• nutritious
• nurse

What are some words that often get used in discussing nourishment?

• food
• body
• mind
• soul
• spiritual
• emotional
• physical
• nutrient
• healthy
• grow
• strong
• develop

Nourishment and its related words are closely associated with food, but they can be used in a variety of contexts.

Maria and her friend play as the sun sets in Zambia. Her father Clement, receives UNICEF-supported cash transfers, which help him give her nourishment and protection.

Support for children and families isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. pic.twitter.com/AYPFp3Dbwn

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) November 4, 2020

Some parents become so fixated on putting food on the table that they neglect the child’s emotional nourishment and that’s sad.

— gaialect (@gaialect) June 1, 2019

Try a week off without internet with nothing but just books, phones off, no TV, no radio no media consumption. You'll appreciate the mental nourishment.

— Kenya West© (@KinyanBoy) December 5, 2017

Which of the following words is NOT a synonym of nourishment?

A. sustenance
B. nurture
C. weakness
D. nutrition