eat
verb
- to ingest
noun
- that which is eaten
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /iːt/ / /it/
noun
Etymology: From Middle English ete, ate, æte, from Old English ǣt (“food, eating”), from Proto-West Germanic *āt, from Proto-Germanic *ētą (“food, thing to eat”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- (“to eat”). Cognate with West Frisian iten (“food”), Saterland Frisian Íeten (“food”), German Aas (“carrion”), Vilamovian aosa (“food”), Icelandic át (“eating; solid food”).
- Something to be eaten; a meal; a food item.
“Eating a Picnic creates a flurry of wafer pieces, flying peanuts and chocolate crumbs. […] As well as being messy, Picnic happens to be a big eat – something of a consumption challenge in fact.”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English eten, from Old English etan (“to eat”), from Proto-West Germanic *etan, from Proto-Germanic *etaną (“to eat”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁édti, from *h₁ed- (“to eat”). Cognates Cognate with Scots ait (“to eat”), Yola ayth, eight (“to eat”), North Frisian iidj, iit, ää'e, ääre, ääse (“to eat”), Saterland Frisian iete, íete (“to eat”), West Frisian ite (“to eat”), Alemannic German asse, assu, essen, ässe, ässä (“to eat”), Bavarian eisn, essn, èssn (“to eat”), Cimbrian èssan, èzzan (“to eat”), Dutch and Low German eten (“to eat”), German essen (“to eat”), Luxembourgish iessen (“to eat”), Mòcheno èssn (“to eat”), Vilamovian aosa (“to eat”), Yiddish עסן (esn, “to eat”), Danish æde (“to eat”), Elfdalian jätå (“to eat”), Faroese eta (“to eat”), Icelandic eta, éta (“to eat”), Norwegian Bokmål ete (“to eat”), Norwegian Nynorsk eta, ete, åtå (“to eat”), Swedish äta (“to eat”), Gothic 𐌹𐍄𐌰𐌽 (itan, “to eat”).
- To ingest; to be ingested.
“He's eating an apple. / Don't disturb me now; can't you see that I'm eating?”
“But meate commendeth vs not to God: for neither if we eate, are we the better: neither if wee eate not, are we the woꝛſe.”
- To ingest; to be ingested.
“What time do we eat this evening?”
“I eat in the kitchen.”
- To ingest; to be ingested.
“It's a soup that eats like a meal.”
“I don't know any quarter in England where you get such undeniable mutton—mutton that eats like mutton, instead of the nasty watery, stringy, turnipy stuff, neither mutton nor lamb, that other countries are inundated with.”
- To ingest; to be ingested.
- To use up.
“This project is eating up all the money.”
“That hobby eats his savings.”
- To use up.
“A bigger problem, however, is that if you catch/eat an exception and do nothing with it, you are very likely introducing subtle bugs in your application that will be next to impossible to track down.”
- To use up.
“The VHS recorder just ate the tape and won't spit it out.”
“John is late for the meeting because the photocopier ate his report.”
- To use up.
“The video game in the corner just ate my quarter.”
“Hey! This stupid [soda vending] machine ate my quarter.”
- To cause (someone) to worry.
“What's eating you?”
- To take the loss in a transaction.
“I have to have him in court tomorrow, if he doesn't show up, I forfeit the bond and I have to eat the $300,000.”
“The server made an error when taking the order. The bartender prepared two scorpion bowls. When the error was realized the bartender was faced with having to "eat" the extra scorpion bowl […]”
- To be injured or killed by (something such as a firearm or its projectile), especially in the mouth.
“I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and Eddie Mars' gang. I dodge bullets and eat saps.”
“And, of course, there was Brian Rusk, who had eaten a bullet at the ripe old age of eleven.”
- To corrode or erode.
“The acid rain ate away the statue. The strong acid eats through the metal.”
- To perform oral sex (on a person or body part).
“Eat me!”
“I ate his ass.”
- To do or perform well and stunningly; to consume a challenge successfully and stylishly; to rule, to slay.
“You ate that performance!”
“This song eats!”
- To annex.