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Devour   /dɪvˈaʊər/   Listen
verb
Devour  v. t.  (past & past part. devoured; pres. part. devouring)  
1.
To eat up with greediness; to consume ravenously; to feast upon like a wild beast or a glutton; to prey upon. "Some evil beast hath devoured him."
2.
To seize upon and destroy or appropriate greedily, selfishly, or wantonly; to consume; to swallow up; to use up; to waste; to annihilate. "Famine and pestilence shall devour him." "I waste my life and do my days devour."
3.
To enjoy with avidity; to appropriate or take in eagerly by the senses. "Longing they look, and gaping at the sight, Devour her o'er with vast delight."
Synonyms: To consume; waste; destroy; annihilate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Devour" Quotes from Famous Books



... and the cunningest artificial fly is of no avail, and the shrewdest angler will do nothing—except with a gross fleshly gilt-tailed worm, or the cannibal bait of roe, whereby parent fishes, like competitive barbarisms, devour each other's flesh and blood—perhaps their own. It is when the stream is clearing after a flood, that the fish will rise. . . . When will the flood clear, and the fish come on ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... begging your pardon, but the villain stings so that you have to scratch yourself for an hour after. You smoke, and go for them, and cover yourself from head to foot, but it is no good! At last you have to sacrifice yourself and let the cursed things devour you. You've no sooner got used to the gnats when another plague begins: downstairs your wife begins practising sentimental songs with her two friends. They sleep by day and rehearse for amateur concerts by night. Oh, my God! Those tenors are a torture with ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... poor fellows something to eat." Some brought meat, some biscuit and bread, and I made them some coffee, after inviting them to come into my yard. The children, boys and girls, assembled to see the four chiefs sitting around the table in the yard devour the food we had prepared ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... extensive northward view, comprising the towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton. It was now a black gulf, without form and void, sputtering fire. Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as suddenly disappeared; tongues of yellow or of crimson, quivering, lambent, seeming to snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety. When a cluster of these fires shot forth together, the sky above became illumined with a broad glare, which throbbed and pulsed in the manner of sheet-lightning, though more lurid, and in a few seconds ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... as a pair of birds nesting in each tree, from the simple fact that the former can only catch the insects that drop to the ground. After we have shaken the curculio beetles off, to be sure the chickens will devour them readily, but then the pest has generally done its work. It is not unusual to have every plum, apricot, nectarine or apple on a tree stung in a single day; and in South Jersey the curculio has proved victorious in the struggle with man. Every year we see these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various


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