Fasted

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To choose not to consume any food for a specific time period To take part in a discipline or tradition that minimizes or eliminates food intake To engage in a process of abstaining from food for health or spiritual reasons
2. Went without eating any food for a set duration, often for health, religious, or personal reasons
3. Refrained from consuming food temporarily as part of a practice or regimen

Etymology: The verb "fasted" is simply the past tense of "fast", but that verb has a surprising history: its oldest sense had nothing to do with food. In Old English, "fæst" meant "firm" or "secure", and it is still visible in "fasten", which means to make something secure. The sense "rapid" developed later, probably first in the adverb (to run "fast" was originally to run "firmly" or "hard"), and then passed to the adjective. The noun in Old English could even mean a fortress or enclosure. The food sense belongs to a separate verb, from Old English "fæstan", which meant "to fast" and came from the same root as "fasten". The religious idea of holding firmly to a rule of abstinence appears in Gothic, where "fastan" glossed Greek and Latin words for going without food. Those Greek and Latin words had no such connotation of "holding fast", so the Gothic usage seems to be a distinct development. Only in the mid-1970s did the medical and weight-loss sense of "fasting" give rise to the verb "fast" used in this way, back-formed from the older noun "fasting".

Synonyms: abstained, refrained

Antonyms: feasted, ate, consumed