alimento-, aliment-
(Latin: food, nourishment)
2. Providing food or nourishment.
The Alimentary Canal
The digestion and absorption of food take place in a muscular tube that runs for over thirty feet (about nine meters) from the mouth to the anus. This is the digestive tract, sometimes referred to as the alimentary canal because we take our aliment (food) through it. It takes about fifteen hours for food to complete the trip through the alimentary canal.
2. Money paid regularly by one marriage partner to the other as ordered by a court after a legal separation or divorce, or during proceedings for divorce or separation.
3. A means of livelihood; maintenance.
Alimony can be called literally, a "meal ticket" when we consider the original source of the word. It is borrowed from Latin alimonia, "nourishment, sustenance", from alere, "to nourish".
The primitive English meaning was "maintenance" or "the means of livelihood", a meaning which is now overshadowed by the use of the word in connection with separated couples.
2. A program of parenteral administration of all nutrients for patients with gastrointestinal dysfunction; called also total parenteral alimentation (TPA) and total parenteral nutrition (TPN).
Although the term hyperalimentation is commonly used to designate total or supplemental nutrition by intravenous feedings, it is not technically correct inasmuch as the procedure does not involve an "abnormally increased or excessive amount of feeding".
It is sometimes followed by forcing oneself to vomit, or purging through use of laxatives.
Cross references of word families that are related directly, or indirectly, to: "food, nutrition, nourishment": broma-; carno-; cibo-; esculent-; sitio-; tropho-; Eating Crawling Snacks; Eating: Carnivorous-Plant "Pets"; Eating: Folivory or Leaf Eaters; Eating: Omnivorous.