devour

verb

1. 1

   To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.

   Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.

2. 2

   To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.

   The fire was devouring the building.

   If ye refuse[…]ye shall be devoured with the sword.

   Blast after blast, fiery outbreak after fiery outbreak, like a flaming barrage from within,[…]most of Edison's grounds soon became an inferno. As though on an incendiary rampage, the fires systematically devoured the contents of Edison's headquarters and facilities.

3. 3

   To take in avidly with the intellect or with one's gaze.

   She intended to devour the book.

   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 flavor.

   My dreams were largely based on the works of Dickens (his Mugby Junction stories), Thackeray (Jeames on the Gauge Question), and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories I kept devouring with gluttonous abandon.

4. 4

   To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner.

   After the death of his wife, he was devoured by grief.

5. 5

   Synonym of eat: to be very good at something; to slay.

   She devoured! She left no crumbs!

Forms

past tense

devoured

past participle

devoured

present participle

devouring

third person singular

devours