eat
//iːt//
Forms
- present (v1)
- eat
- past (v2)
- ate
- past participle (v3)
- eaten
- present participle
- eating
- 3rd person singular
- eats
- Plural
- eats
Definitions
1.To ingest.
- I try to eat healthy these days.
- What time do we eat this evening?
- Don't disturb me now. Can't you see that I'm eating?
2.To be ingested.
- It's a soup that eats like a meal.
3.To use up.
- This project is eating up all the money.
- His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.
- The video game in the corner just ate my quarter.
4.To cause (someone) to worry.(informal)
- I don't eat the core of an apple.
- The soup's too hot, I can't eat it.
- I like to eat apples.
1.Something to be eaten; a meal; a food item.(colloquial)
- 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.
Frequency
Overall
Very common· #476
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Common
- General reading & writing
- Very common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Common
Related words
Etymology
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”).
Cognates