EAT

To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. "To eat grass as oxen." Dan. iv. 25. 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 junkets eat. Milton. The island princes overbold Have eat our substance. Tennyson. His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages. Thackeray.

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. To eat humble pie. See under Humble. -- To eat of (partitive use). "Eat of the bread that can not waste." Keble. -- 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." Tillotson. -- To eat the wind out of a vessel (Naut.), to gain slowly to windward of her.

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.

To taste or relish; as, it eats like tender beef.

To make one's way slowly. To eat, To eat in or into, to make way by corrosion; to gnaw; to consume. "A sword laid by, which eats into itself." Byron. -- To eat to windward (Naut.), to keep the course when closehauled with but little steering; -- said of a vessel.