EAT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Eat

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verb

Eat v. t. (past ate, obs. or colloq. eat; past part. eaten, obs. or colloq. eat; pres. part. eating)

To chew and swallow as food; to devour; said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. "To eat grass as oxen." "They... ate the sacrifices of the dead." "The lean... did eat up the first seven fat kine." "The lion had not eaten the carcass." "With stories told of many a feat, How fairy Mab the junkets eat." "The island princes overbold Have eat our substance." "His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages."

To corrode, as metal, by rust; to consume the flesh, as a cancer; to waste or wear away; to destroy gradually; to cause to disappear.

To eat humble pie. See under Humble.

To eat of (partitive use). "Eat of the bread that can not waste."

To eat one's words, to retract what one has said. (See the Citation under Blurt.)

To eat out, to consume completely. "Eat out the heart and comfort of it."

To eat the wind out of a vessel (Naut.), to gain slowly to windward of her.

Synonyms: To consume; devour; gnaw; corrode.

Eat v. i. (past ate, obs. or colloq. eat; past part. eaten, obs. or colloq. eat; pres. part. eating)

To take food; to feed; especially, to take solid, in distinction from liquid, food; to board. "He did eat continually at the king's table."

To taste or relish; as, it eats like tender beef.

To make one's way slowly.

To eat, To eat in or To eat into, to make way by corrosion; to gnaw; to consume. "A sword laid by, which eats into itself."

To eat to windward (Naut.), to keep the course when closehauled with but little steering; said of a vessel.

See images of 'Eat'

Etymology of 'Eat'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Eat" Quotes from Famous Books

... to finish anything she has begun. Sometimes when she is arguing with Kirkpatrick she sticks out that chin of hers so far that you notice how square it is. She has him pretty well tamed though. When he is ready to eat the rest of us alive she can smooth him down like a ...

— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... madness, My soule was ravisht quite as in a traunce, And, feeling thence no more her sorrowes sadnesse, Fed on the fulnesse of that chearfull glaunce. More sweet than nectar, or ambrosiall meat, Seem'd every bit which thenceforth I did eat. ...

— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... they cannot be spoken of. A medical philosopher, who has so simply fixed his intellect on his own science as to have forgotten the existence of any other, will view man, who is the subject of his contemplation, as a being who has little more to do than to be born, to grow, to eat, to drink, to walk, to reproduce his kind, and to die. He sees him born as other animals are born; he sees life leave him, with all those phenomena of annihilation which accompany the death of a brute. He compares his structure, ...

— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... a new job that evening. Only—he was so tired; it was so pleasant to lie there with his sore feet cooling against the wall, picturing a hunt in Africa, with native servants bringing him things to eat: juicy steaks and French-fried potatoes and gallons of ale (a repast which he may have been ignorant in assigning to the African jungles, but which seemed peculiarly well chosen, after a lunch-room dinner of watery corned-beef hash, burnt German-fried ...

— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... "You've got to eat humble pie," she said, as a laughing note crept into her voice when she thought of Jamie Lyman, insignificant and warty cause of such a storm. "About your going back, that is for papa to say, dear. I think ...

— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

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