1.
[syn: fast, fasting]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Fast \Fast\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Fasted; p. pr. & vb. n.
Fasting.] [AS. f[ae]stan; akin to D. vasten, OHG.
fast[=e]n, G. fasten, Icel. & Sw. fasta, Dan. faste, Goth.
fastan to keep, observe, fast, and prob. to E. fast firm.]
1. To abstain from food; to omit to take nourishment in whole
or in part; to go hungry.
[1913 Webster]
Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked.
--Milton.
[1913 Webster]
2. To practice abstinence as a religious exercise or duty; to
abstain from food voluntarily for a time, for the
mortification of the body or appetites, or as a token of
grief, or humiliation and penitence.
[1913 Webster]
Thou didst fast and weep for the child. --2 Sam.
xii. 21.
[1913 Webster]
Fasting day, a fast day; a day of fasting.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
fasting
n 1: abstaining from food [syn: fast, fasting]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
59 Moby Thesaurus words for "fasting":
Albigensianism, Catharism, Day of Atonement, Franciscanism, Lenten,
Sabbatarianism, Trappism, Waldensianism, Yoga, Yom Kippur,
abstinence, anchoritic monasticism, anchoritism, asceticism,
austerity, cold purgatorial fires, dog-hungry, empty, eremitism,
famished, famishing, flagellation, hair shirt, half-famished,
half-starved, hungering, hungry, lustration, maceration,
mendicantism, monachism, monasticism, mortification, peckish,
penance, penitence, penitential act, penitential exercise,
pinched with hunger, purgation, purgatory, puritanism,
quadragesimal, ravening, ravenous, repentance, rigor,
sackcloth and ashes, self-denial, self-mortification, sharp-set,
starved, starving, uneating, unfed, unfilled, voluntary poverty,
voracious, wolfish