Eat Definition

ēt
ate, eating, eats
verb
ate, eating, eats
To put (food) in the mouth, chew if necessary, and swallow.
Webster's New World
To take in and absorb as food.
A plant that eats insects; a cell that eats bacteria.
American Heritage Medicine
To include habitually or by preference in one's diet.
A bird that eats insects, fruit, and seeds; started eating less red meat on advice from my doctor.
American Heritage Medicine
To destroy or use up something gradually.
Webster's New World
To penetrate and destroy, as acid does; corrode.
Webster's New World
idiom
eat crow
  • To be forced to accept a humiliating defeat.
American Heritage
eat (one's) heart out
  • To feel bitter anguish or grief.
  • To be consumed by jealousy.
American Heritage
eat (one's) words
  • To retract something that one has said.
American Heritage
eat out of (someone's) hand
  • To be manipulated or dominated by another.
American Heritage
eat (someone) alive
  • To overwhelm or defeat thoroughly:

    an inexperienced manager who was eaten alive in a competitive corporate environment.

American Heritage

Origin of Eat

  • From Middle English eten, from Old English etan (“to eat”), from Proto-Germanic *etaną (“to eat”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- (“to eat”). Cognate with Scots aet (“to eat”), West Frisian ite, Low German eten (“to eat”), Dutch eten (“to eat”), German essen (“to eat”), Swedish äta (“to eat”), Danish æde (“to eat”), and more distantly with Latin edō (“eat”, verb), Ancient Greek ἔδω (edō), Russian есть (jest', “to eat”), and Lithuanian ėsti.

    From Wiktionary

  • Middle English eten from Old English etan ed- in Indo-European roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

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