Eat
Eat (ēt) , transitive verb
[Old English eten, Anglo-Saxon etan; akin to Old Saxon etan, OFries. eta, Dutch eten, Old High German ezzan, German essen, Icelandic eta, Swedish ata, Danish ade, Gothic itan, Ir. & Gael. ith, Welsh ysu, Latin edere, Greek 'e`dein, Sanskrit ad. r6. Compare Etch, Fret to rub, Edible.]
1.
To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. [Obsolescent & Colloquial; Obsolete or Colloquial]
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.
2.
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.
Collocations (5)
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 (Nautical) , to gain slowly to windward of her.
Eat , intransitive verb
1.
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.
2.
To taste or relish; as, it eats like tender beef.
3.
To make one's way slowly.
Collocations (2)
To eat or 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 (Nautical) , to keep the course when closehauled with but little steering; -- said of a vessel.