Meaning of belly-timber | Babel Free

Definitions

Food, provender.

archaic, dialectal, humorous, uncountable, usually

Examples

“And tho' knights errant, as some think⟳, / Of old did neither eat⟳ nor drink⟳, / Because when thorough deserts vast, / And regions desolate, they past, / Where belly-timber above ground, / Or under, was not to be found …”

“The strength of every other member / Is founded on your belly-timber; / The qualms or raptures of your blood, / Rise⟳ in proportion to your food; …”

“I hope⟳, a'gad, they have⟳ not forgotten my trunk-mails of apparel amid the ample provision they have⟳ made for their own⟳ belly-timber—Mercy, a'gad, I were finely holped up if the vesture has miscarried among the thievish Borderers!”

“The term belly-timber, meaning food, [...] actually originated in the early seventeenth century as a commonplace, everyday term, although within fifty years it came to be seen as a ludicrous and affected compound; accordingly, after the mid seventeenth century, belly-timber was used only ironically, meaning that you could say⟳ it only while wiggling in the air two fingers of each hand. In Old English, the word timber originally meant house, having developed from an Indo-European source that meant to build⟳. By the tenth century timber had come⟳ to mean⟳ building material, which was the sense⟳ from which belly-timber developed, food being the "building-material" of the human body.”

CEFR level