Eat /(ēt)/

Eat

v. t.

imp. Ate; p. p. Eaten; p. pr. & vb. n. Eating

  1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. Obsolescent & Colloq.
    They . . . ate the sacrifices of the dead.
    — Ps. cvi. 28.
    The lean . . . did eat up the first seven fat kine.
    — Gen. xli. 20.
    The lion had not eaten the carcass.
    — 1 Kings xiii. 28.
    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.

Phrases & Compounds
To eat humble pie
See under Humble.
To eat of
(partitive use).
To eat one's words
to retract what one has said. (See the Citation under Blurt.)
To eat out
to consume completely.
To eat the wind out of a vessel
to gain slowly to windward of her.

Eat

v. i.
  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 Sam. ix. 13.
  2. To taste or relish; as, it eats like tender beef.
  3. To make one's way slowly.

Phrases & Compounds
To eat
to make way by corrosion; to gnaw; to consume.
To eat to windward
to keep the course when closehauled with but little steering; -- said of a vessel.