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Gnaw at   /nɔ æt/   Listen
Gnaw at

verb
1.
Become ground down or deteriorate.  Synonyms: eat at, erode, gnaw, wear away.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Gnaw at" Quotes from Famous Books



... in politics the lustre of valiance in the lists of love, and he encountered laughing congratulations from his friends and political supporters, which served much to reassure him and to banish a vague and subtle anxiety as to public opinion that had begun to gnaw at his heart. They all seemed to think he had done a very fine thing, and that it was a very good joke, and he was soon most jauntily of their persuasion. He could not know that here and there people ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... lieutenant in the —-st Foot, a Mr. Vannicock, who was stationed with his regiment at the Budmouth infantry barracks. As Laura frequently sat on the shelving beach, watching each thin wave slide up to her, and hearing, without heeding, its gnaw at the pebbles in its retreat, he often ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... began to gnaw at the cabbage and, as he had very good teeth for gnawing—almost as good as Sammy Littletail's—he soon had quite a hole made. But he kept on gnawing and eating away, so fine did it taste, until, in a little while if he hadn't eaten a hole right into the ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... chanced to see Bevis doing it. He had to attend to something else then, but by-and-by, when he had finished, he went and looked at the place where Bevis had set the gin, and said to himself: "Well, it is a very good plan to set up the gin, for the rat is always taking the pigs' food, and even had a gnaw at my luncheon, which was tied up in my handkerchief, and which I—like a stupid—left on the ground in my hurry instead of hanging up. But it is a pity Sir Bevis should have set it here, for there is no grass or cover, and the rat is certain to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... always to him. "It is labour enough for a man to keep his own life clean and his own hands honest. Be not thou at any time as they are who are for ever telling the good God how He might have made the world on a better plan, while the rats gnaw at their hay-stacks and the children cry over an ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various



Words linked to "Gnaw at" :   crumble, erode, decay, dilapidate, eat at



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