consuming

American  

[kuhn-soo-ming] / kənˈsu mɪŋ /

adjective

1. strongly and urgently felt.

   a consuming need to be successful.

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Other Word Forms

• consumingly
  adverb
• consumingness
  noun
• nonconsuming
  adjective
• quasi-consuming
  adjective
• self-consuming
  adjective
• unconsuming
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of consuming

consume + -ing ²

Explanation

If you have a passion for art, and making it is all you can think about or do, your passion for art is consuming. It is intense and almost overwhelming. Picture a fire burning in a fireplace. The fire consumes the logs you have put in it. It completely devours them in order to burn. When something, a passion or a drive, is consuming, it dominates a person's life like that fire, and in a sense, it devours their energy and attention. Your consuming desire to travel might cause you to study abroad for a semester or even move to Europe.

Example Sentences

However, more people were still consuming protein shakes, with little evidence they were switching to other protein-boosted beverages or snacks, according to Davenport.

From MarketWatch • May 5, 2026

France favours creating a system of groups of producing, processing and consuming nations that share a commitment to implementing good practices.

From Barron's • May 5, 2026

“This is not just an online viral trend that we are consuming, it is something that we are actually hearing and seeing from our young people,” she says.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 4, 2026

However, they weren’t just passively consuming this music, they also left their marks on it, quite literally.

From Los Angeles Times • May 4, 2026

However, something then went wrong between them–nobody is quite sure what–and by the following year they had developed an enmity that would grow into consuming hatred over the next thirty years.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson