consume
Americanverb (used with object)
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consumes,
present (3rd person singular)
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consumed,
past participle, past
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consuming
present participle
verb (used without object)
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consumes,
present (3rd person singular)
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consumed,
past participle, past
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consuming
present participle
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to undergo destruction; waste away.
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to use or use up consumer goods.
verb
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(tr) to eat or drink
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(tr; often passive) to engross or obsess
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(tr) to use up; expend
my car consumes little oil
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to destroy or be destroyed by burning, decomposition, etc
fire consumed the forest
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(tr) to waste or squander
the time consumed on that project was excessive
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(passive) to waste away
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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overconsumeverb
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preconsumeverb (used with object)
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underconsumeverb (used with object)
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consumingadjective
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half-consumedadjective
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unconsumedadjective
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consuminglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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consumesimple
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consumessimple
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have consumedperfect
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has consumedperfect
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am consumingprogressive
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are consumingprogressive
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is consumingprogressive
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have been consumingperfect progressive
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has been consumingperfect progressive
Past
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consumedsimple
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had consumedperfect
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was consumingprogressive
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were consumingprogressive
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had been consumingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of consume
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Middle French consumer, from Latin consūmere, from con- con- + sūmere “to take up” (equivalent to subs-, variant of sub- sub- + emere “to take, buy”; cf. emptor ( def. ))
Explanation
"The Freshman 15" describes freshman-year college students who gain about fifteen pounds because they consume way too much lousy dorm food all day long. To consume a cake is to eat it, the idea being that you ate the whole thing. To say a fire consumed a building is to say that the entire building was destroyed. Consume means to devour, to take in, to use up. The Unites States is often referred to as a consumer society because our economy is based on things being consumed. Whether it's gas, clothes, burgers, music, or anything that we use up as we purchase it, it's something that we consume. If we consume all the oil, there will be none left to burn.
Vocabulary lists containing consume
Eat Your Words
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"Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare, Act II
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Number the Stars
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It is hoped that a pilot version of the new festival will run in August 2027, and that it will be expanded to include those who consume content as well as those who make it.
From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026
He would return to the U.S. every summer and consume everything from “The Outer Limits” to “Alice,” a sitcom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
Visions of light, fields of talking flowers, moving patterns, and dense waves of dots would surround and consume her.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
New research from Florida Atlantic University's Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine suggests that men who consume more UPFs may have an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026
Mud would nourish you, where fire would only consume you, but fools and children and young girls would choose fire every time.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
Rent now consumes 40% of Roe’s $83,000 gross income, roughly the median household income in the U.S.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
Instead of reducing the amount of energy a person consumes, their approach is designed to increase the amount of energy the body uses by raising metabolic activity.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 23, 2026
Murrill told lawmakers last year that defending the state against these claims consumes an enormous amount of time and resources and that the fund should be abolished altogether.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2026
A PlayStation 5 consumes about one megawatt-hour of electricity per 5,000 gaming hours, CleanPlay estimates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
“But only if it consumes peculiars. It can eat as many normals as it likes and it will never turn into a wight. Therefore, we must have something normals lack.”
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
The northbound Glendale Freeway was closed briefly for a small brush fire Wednesday afternoon while, to the south, fire crews battled a blaze in Orange County that quickly consumed more than 200 acres.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
Among first-generation offspring, signs of impaired glucose tolerance appeared only in males descended from mice that consumed sucralose.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
U.S. smelters produced 660,000 tons of primary aluminum in 2025, but the country consumed 5.7 million tons.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 31, 2026
Culture that is primarily consumed by one generation does not inherently make it of that generation.
From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2026
And why was one sugar consumed first, and only then the second, like a two-course bistro lunch?
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
He continued later that the two discussed how industrialism “grows only by consuming, once and for all, the living world.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
For a country consuming data at extraordinary speed, the infrastructure carrying it remains surprisingly fragile.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026
Choosing the diet version of a favorite soda often means consuming non-nutritive sweeteners.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
The American Farm Bureau Federation warned in May, however, that Americans are consuming more beef than US farmers and ranchers can supply.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
But despite this apparent munificence, the meat he’d been killing was very lean, and he was consuming fewer calories than he was burning.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
