devour
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /dɪˈvaʊ(w)ə(ɹ)/
Verb

devour (devours, present participle devouring; past and past participle devoured)

  1. To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.
  2. To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.
    The fire was devouring the building.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Isaiah 1:20 ↗:
      If ye refuse […] ye shall be devoured with the sword.
  3. To take in avidly with the intellect or with one's gaze.
    She intended to devour the book.
    • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384 ↗:
      Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
  4. To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner.
    After the death of his wife, he was devoured by grief.
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