Etymology Dictionary

ALIMENT,  food.  (F.,—L.)   Milton has alimental, P. L. v. 424; Bacon has 'medicine and aliment,' Nat. Hist. sect. 67.—F. 'aliment, food, sustenance, nourishment;' Cot.—Lat. alimentum, food; formed with suffix -mentum from alere, to nourish.   [This suffix is due to a combination of the Aryan suffixes -man and -ta, on which see Schleicher.]—Lat. alere, to nourish. + Goth. alan, to nourish. + Icel. ala, to nourish, support.   Cf. Old Irish altram, nourishment.—✔AL, to grow; and, transitively, to make to grow, to nourish, from a still older ✔AR, to rise up.   See Fick, i. 499, Curtius, i. 444.   Der. aliment-al, aliment-ary, aliment-at-ion; cf. also alimony (from Lat. alimonium, sustenance, which from stem ali-, with suffixes -man and -ja).   ¶ From the same root al- we have also ad-ult, old, elder, alder, and others.