diet

noun

1. The food and beverage a person or animal consumes.

   “The diet of the giant panda consists mainly of bamboo.”

   “It is common policy to order no more diet than will be used within one month.”

2. (countable)A controlled regimen of food and drink choices, as to gain or lose weight or otherwise influence health.

   “He's been on a diet since he found out that he has coronary atherosclerosis.”

   “The doctor put me on a low-salt diet.”

   “My jeans are too tight, so I'm going on a diet.”

3. (broadly)Any habitual intake or consumption.

   “He's been reading a steady diet of nonfiction for the last several years.”

   “Last week the aging video game retailer emerged as the hottest stock on Wall Street, a story just unexpected and absurd enough to fill the new Trump-shaped void in our nation’s media diet.”

4. (capitalized, usually)A council or assembly of leaders; a formal deliberative assembly.

   “the National Diet of Japan”

   “They were given representation in some important diet committees.”

5. (Scotland)A session of exams.

   “Normally the diet begins towards the end of April.”

6. A criminal proceeding in court.
7. (Scotland)A clerical or ecclesiastical function in Scotland.

   “a diet of worship”

8. (abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable)Abbreviation of direct interspecies electron transfer.

adj

1. (not-comparable)Containing less fat, salt, sugar, or calories than normal, or claimed to have such.

   “diet soda”

   “Many grocery chains offer premium-priced lean or diet hamburger; but the fat content is usually at least 10 percent, sometimes 15 percent or more.”

   “The difference in weight (mass) of the regular and the diet drink of the same brand roughly equals to the amount of sugar in the regular drink.”

   “Diet Light (Pizarro 724; snacks S2-7; 9:30am-10pm) This perennially busy place serves not-very-diet, but yummy nonetheless, ice cream (S2 to S5) and whopping servings of mixed fruit (S3) – with ice cream.”

2. (figuratively, informal, not-comparable)Having certain traits subtracted.

   “You folks reduce it to the bible only as being authoritative, impoverishing the faith. "Christianity Lite", diet Christianity for those who can't handle the Whole Meal.”

verb

1. (intransitive)To modify one's food and beverage intake so as to decrease or increase body weight or influence health.

   “I've been dieting for six months, and I've lost some weight.”

2. (dated, transitive)To regulate the food of (someone); to put on a diet.

   “they will diet themselves, feed and live alone.”

   “When all signs of effusion, dulness, pain, œgophony, and cough had disappeared he was dieted, stimulated, and tonicked.”

   “As illustrating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer quotes an ancient writer who says that for some time after the ceremony the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting the devotee on milk, like a new-born babe.”

3. (obsolete)To eat; to take one's meals.

   “Let him[…]diet in such places, where there is good company of the nation, where he travelleth.”

4. (obsolete, transitive)To cause to take food; to feed.

   “But partly led to diet my revenge […].”

name

1. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of diet (“formal deliberative assembly”).