Eat v. t. [imp. Ate Obsolescent & Colloq. Eat p. p. Eaten Obs. or Colloq. Eat (ĕt); p. pr. & vb. n. Eating.]
 1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. “To eat grass as oxen.”
    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.   --Milton.
 The island princes overbold
 Have eat our substance.   --Tennyson.
    His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.   --Thackeray.
 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.
 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.
 Syn: -- To consume; devour; gnaw; corrode.