What’s the origin of the phrase ‘It is meat and drink to me’?
It isn’t clear which of those two meanings is intended in the earliest known use of the phrase - John Frith’s, A boke answering vnto M. Mores lettur, 1533:
“It is meate and drinke to this childe to playe.”
Shakespeare used the phrase in As You Like It, 1600, and the meaning there is clearly the former:
“It is meat and drinke to me to see a Clowne.”