Word of the Day

: November 28, 2024

victuals

noun plural VIT-ulz

What It Means

Victuals is a word with an old-fashioned feel that refers to food, and sometimes to both food and drink.

// Rachel’s grandparents’ larder was full of canned tomatoes and peaches, jars of pickled beans, jugs of dandelion wine, and other time-honored victuals.

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victuals in Context

“May in Atlanta brings refreshing cocktails, meals on the patio and Cinco de Mayo festivities. The holiday, which celebrates the Mexican army’s victory over France at the 1862 Battle of Puebla, offers the perfect occasion to appreciate Mexican-American culture and all the great victuals associated with it.” — Olivia Wakim, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 22 Apr. 2024

Did You Know?

In the introduction to her 2016 cookbook Victuals, writer Ronni Lundy remarks on the (to some) unusual divergence between how her book’s title is spelled and how it is pronounced: “Say it the way my people have for centuries: vidls. ... Maybe you thought saying it that way was wrong. But look up that word in your dictionary. It turns out my people, the people of the southern Appalachian Mountains, have been right about victuals all along.” Indeed, they have! Victuals refers to supplies of usually prepared foods (rather than raw ingredients) and comes from the Late Latin word victualia meaning “provisions,” and ultimately from Latin vivere, “to live.” It went through French before it came into English, and the pronunciation VIT-ulz was presumably established based on the French spelling vitaille before the spelling was changed to better reflect the Latin root of the word. Victuals would be spelled “vittles” if its pronunciation dictated its form, and vittles is in fact given in our dictionaries as a variant of victuals, though the spelling is used mostly playfully to evoke the supposed language of cowboys as depicted in movies, etc.