Did You Know?
If you're hungry for the story behind "victual," get ready to dig into a rich and fulfilling history. The word derives via Middle English and Anglo-French from the Latin noun "victus," meaning "nourishment" or "way of living." "Victus" derives from the verb "vivere," which means "to live" and which is the source of a whole smorgasbord of other English words like "vital," "vivid," and "survive." It's also the root of "viand," another English word referring to food. There's also "vittles," a word that sounds like it might be an alteration of the plural "victuals" but which actually entered English a century before "victual."
*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.
