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Synonyms

lap up

British  

verb

  1. to eat or drink

  2. to relish or delight in

    he laps up old horror films

  3. to believe or accept eagerly and uncritically

    he laps up tall stories
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
lap up Idioms  

  1. Take in or receive very eagerly, as in She loves to travel—she just laps it up, or The agency is lapping up whatever information their spies send in. This expression alludes to an animal drinking greedily. [Late 1800s]

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.

They have no teeth and instead of biting and chewing, they use their long tongues to lap up thousands of ants or termites a day in the wild.

From BBC • Apr. 1, 2026

It’s the perfect place for Allen to lap up the last of the warm weather when he returns to Buffalo for preseason training camp, which kicks off on July 24.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 4, 2026

We’re merely a society trained to lap up the crud served up to us on a platter just because it’s sitting there, screaming at us from the autoplay feature in Netflix’s infuriating user interface.

From Salon • Dec. 21, 2024

Ocean water is able to seep beneath ice shelves and lap up against the edge of the glacier at the grounding line, melting the ice from the bottom up.

From Scientific American • Feb. 16, 2023

I squint down at my feet and see that my metal plate is surrounded by blue waves that lap up over my boots.

From "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins

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.