Farmed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To engage in agriculture by systematically cultivating land and raising various crops and livestock for consumption or profit
2. Used or managed to grow crops or raise animals systematically for food production
3. Prepared and operated as farmland where plants or livestock are produced for human use

Etymology: The verb "farm" began as a money word. In medieval England, a "ferme" was a fixed payment, a lease or rent paid to the Crown or a landlord, and to farm something meant to lease it out for that set sum. The agricultural sense came later: whoever took a lease on land for a fixed rent was, in effect, working it for profit, and the land itself came to be called a farm. The verb's ancestry runs back to a shared Old English and Germanic idea of supplies and sustenance. Its Old English relative "feormian" meant to feed or supply with food, so the modern sense of raising crops or animals for food sits close to the word's oldest meanings. Scholars disagree whether the medieval Latin "ferma" came from that Germanic stock or from the Latin "firmus", meaning "solid" or "secure", so the deepest root is still debated.

Synonyms: cultivated, raised, produced, grown, harvested

Antonyms: wild, uncultivated, foraged, natural, untamed