- present participle of consume.
consuming
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of consuming
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.
Vocabulary lists containing consuming
"The Scholarship Jacket" by Marta Salinas
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Clap When You Land
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NYTimes Summer Reading Contest Winners' Words
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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.
Alphabet’s Google Cloud backlog has reached $240 billion, also more than doubling year over year, as existing customers are consuming cloud services more than 30% faster than their original commitments.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
“We still have a long runway of more consumers consuming more every day,” Van de Put said on an investor call on July 28.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
The central question is whether spacecraft could reach these asteroids, extract useful materials, and transport them to Mars without consuming so much energy and fuel that the entire effort becomes impractical.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 7, 2026
The guidance suggests applicants for new licences should aim for "a predominantly seated operation with fixed seating", alongside waiter service replacing vertical drinking and restrictions on customers consuming alcohol while standing.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
My appetite vanished and my digestive system, which required abundant oxygen to metabolize food, failed to make use of much of what I forced myself to eat; instead my body began consuming itself for sustenance.
From "Into Thin Air" 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.
