Etimology
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”).
verb
eat (third-person singular simple present eats, present participle eating, simple past ate or (dialectal) et or (obsolete) eat, past participle eaten or (dialectal) etten)
To ingest; to be ingested.
To use up.
(transitive, informal) To cause (someone) to worry.
(transitive, business) To take the loss in a transaction.
(transitive, slang) To be injured or killed by (something such as a firearm or its projectile), especially in the mouth.
(transitive, intransitive) To corrode or erode.
(transitive, slang) To perform oral sex (on a person or body part).
(stative, slang) To be very good; to rule; to rock.
(transitive, slang) To annex.
Examples
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.
At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.
But Richmond […] appeared to lose himself in his own reflections. Some pickled crab, which he had not touched, had been removed with a damson pie; and his sister saw […] that he had eaten no more than a spoonful of that either.
Shepard: Everyone on this station is chafing under Anoleis' extortion. You might end up a hero.Lorik Qui'in: My employers rely on the goodwill of the Executive Board to work here.Wrex: If these "executives" don't blame Anoleis for provoking this, they're fools. You should eat them.
What time do we eat this evening?
I eat in the kitchen. Audio
Audio
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.
[…] dish him [the fish] with slices of oranges, barberries, grapes, gooseberries, and butter; and you will find that he eats deliriously either with farced pain or gammon pain.
This project is eating up all the money.
His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.
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.
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.
No! There's a problem with the cassette player. Don't press fast forward or it eats the tape!
The video game in the corner just ate my quarter.
Hey! This stupid [soda vending] machine ate my quarter.
What's eating you?
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 […]
When they were doing it with the valuation professionals, they were billing the client, but the valuation professional in a lot of those early cases had to eat the cost of showing the auditor how the auditors' test model was incorrect.
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.
Friends are only necessary in the ghastly country, where you have to have them, along with rubber boots and a barometer and secateurs, to put off bucolic idiocy, a wet brain, or eating the 12-bore.
Mike had been to other calls where someone had eaten a gun. He knew to expect teeth embedded in the ceiling and brains dripping off it.
The animal was sweating and scared and MacAdams was surprised when they finished up without either of them eating a kick.
There was a resounding smacking noise and Georgy was sure Philip had just eaten a fist.
The acid rain ate away the statue. The strong acid eats through the metal.
Eat me!
I ate his ass.
Yeah, eat that dick / eat that pussy.
You ate that performance!
This song eats!
Synonyms: bang, rule, rock, slap
Related words
synonyms
(consume): consume, swallow; see also Thesaurus:eat
(cause to worry): bother, disturb, worry
(eat a meal): dine, breakfast, chow down, feed one's face, have one's breakfast/lunch/dinner/supper/tea, lunch
(perform oral sex on (a person)): eat out; see also Thesaurus:oral sex
related terms
fret
ort
Etimology
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 North Frisian ad, it (“food”), German Aas (“carrion”), Norwegian åt, Icelandic át (“food”).
noun
eat (plural eats)
(colloquial) Something to be eaten; a meal; a food item.
Examples
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.