gobble

¹ American  

[gob-uhl] / ˈgɒb əl /

verb (used with object)

gobbled, gobbling

1. to swallow or eat hastily or hungrily in large pieces; gulp.

   Synonyms:

   devour, bolt

2. to seize upon eagerly (often followed byup ).

   After being gone for so long, they gobbled up all the local news.

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verb (used without object)

gobbled, gobbling

1. to eat hastily.

gobble ² American  

[gob-uhl] / ˈgɒb əl /

verb (used without object)

gobbled, gobbling

1. to make the characteristic throaty cry of a male turkey.

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noun

• gobbles
  plural

1. the cry itself.

gobble ¹ British  

/ ˈɡɒbəl /

noun

1. the loud rapid gurgling sound made by male turkeys

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interjection

1. an imitation of this sound

verb

1. (intr) (of a turkey) to make this sound

gobble ² British  

/ ˈɡɒbəl /

verb

1. to eat or swallow (food) hastily and in large mouthfuls

2. informal to snatch

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• gobbles
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of gobble¹

1595–1605; probably imitative; see gob ¹, -le

Origin of gobble²

First recorded in 1670–80; variant of gabble

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Explanation

To gobble is to eat quickly — really quickly. When you gobble your dinner, you hardly even chew your food. You’ve probably been told that gobbling your food is impolite. However, maybe you can get away with it if you impress your dining companions with some interesting facts about this word’s history. Gobble comes from an Old French word meaning “a mouthful” or “a lump.” It’s related to gob, a slang term for “mouth” in the UK.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gobble gobbles gobbled gobbling

So you’ll find that ETFs will gobble up the more established and safe-relatively safe-crypto assets.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

The deal comes as AI data centers gobble up power, leaving companies worried about their ability to secure sufficient energy for future endeavors.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026

These brokers, many of whom were in the Korean community, would gobble up tee times, then advertise them on social media, particularly the Korean app KakaoTalk.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026

Grant said he tried to make the deal work, but ultimately determined the tax would gobble up too much of the project’s future value.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 20, 2026

This time he chose different words: They gobble down all the food at home.

From "The Girl Who Married a Lion: and Other Tales from Africa" by Alexander Mccall Smith

The answer, for that sample, was: mostly Desmodesmus, a green algae that gobbles up phosphorus and nitrogen.

From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2026

The story is simple: The dad flusters, fidgets and whines; the girl gobbles room service as though aspiring to become human foie gras.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

Meanwhile, the consumer-electronics world faces an acute memory-chip shortage, as AI-infrastructure demand gobbles up semiconductor supplies and thus threatens to drive up the price of things like smartphones and laptops.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 25, 2026

Market research firms like IDC and Counterpoint Research have indicated that the weakness is in the Android market, while Apple gobbles up market share amid a memory chip shortage.

From Barron's ● Apr. 16, 2026

I give her a spoonful of potato salad while Spot gobbles his hot dog.

From "Ninth Ward" by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Having been gobbled up like a meal worm, Jay dredges up flashbacks of his father’s lectures in whale anatomy.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026

I wrote a daily newsletter about energy policy at the time, and, in my efforts to be at the forefront of the news, I gobbled up those nuggets as well.

From Slate ● Jul. 27, 2026

Germany’s export-reliant economy was hit hard by the rise of China as a manufacturing superpower, which has gobbled up market share from Germany’s flagship automotive and engineering sectors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

It also gobbled up nearly two-thirds of U.S. venture capital last year, with San Francisco Bay Area startups such as OpenAI leading the way, according to the business information platform Crunchbase.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2026

Sure enough, he gobbled up a couple of pieces of ham and some cornbread crumbs, and Jackie said, “Wishbone! Stop that!”

From "Wish" by Barbara O'Connor

For close to two decades, this crowd-pleasing pop superstar has been topping charts and gobbling up Grammys with detailed recreations of an ever-expanding array of past musical styles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

"You could walk in the op center and see it. It was this big red blob that was just gobbling up terrain."

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

His previous feature, 2016’s love-it-or-hate-it loony toon “The Neon Demon,” was a modeling industry semi-satire that featured beauties quite literally gobbling up their ingenue competition.

From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2026

Chinese car manufacturers are gobbling up European market share, especially in electric vehicles, and are rapidly expanding market share at the expense of the European automobile companies.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 1, 2026

To the Soviet Union, which had been left out of the Munich Agreement, the rate at which Germany was gobbling up European territory was seriously alarming.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein

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Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow

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