devour
Americanverb (used with object)
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devours,
present (3rd person singular)
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devoured,
past participle, past
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devouring
present participle
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to swallow or eat up hungrily, voraciously, or ravenously.
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to consume destructively, recklessly, or wantonly.
Fire devoured the old museum.
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to engulf or swallow up.
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to take in greedily with the senses or intellect.
to devour the works of Freud.
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to absorb or engross wholly.
a mind devoured by fears.
verb
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to swallow or eat up greedily or voraciously
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to waste or destroy; consume
the flames devoured the curtains
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to consume greedily or avidly with the senses or mind
he devoured the manuscripts
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to engulf or absorb
the flood devoured the land
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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devourernoun
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devouringnessnoun
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interdevourverb (used with object)
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predevourverb (used with object)
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redevourverb (used with object)
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devouringadjective
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self-devouringadjective
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undevouredadjective
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devouringlyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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devoursimple
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devourssimple
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have devouredperfect
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has devouredperfect
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am devouringprogressive
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are devouringprogressive
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is devouringprogressive
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have been devouringperfect progressive
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has been devouringperfect progressive
Past
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devouredsimple
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had devouredperfect
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was devouringprogressive
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were devouringprogressive
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had been devouringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of devour
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English devouren, from Anglo-French, Old French devourer, from Latin dēvorāre “to swallow down,” from dē- de- + vorāre “to eat up”
Explanation
When you've gone all day without eating anything, you'll probably devour your dinner, especially if it's your very favorite homemade lasagna. Devour means to eat greedily and hungrily. The meaning of devour has grown to include the consumption of things other than food. If you sit down to start a book and look up ten hours later having turned the last page, you have devoured that book. If your after school job devours all your free time, chances are your grades are going to drop. The Latin root, devorare, means "to swallow down."
Vocabulary lists containing devour
Eat Your Words
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 7–11
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Unit 1: Telling Details
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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:
I still devour new music this way, clocking a daily average of four hours of tunes familiar and novel.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2026
A 1-gigawatt AI data center can devour roughly as much electricity as 1,000 Walmart stores, or the entire city of San Francisco.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
For him and his family, this is a rare chance to devour durians "of good quality, and sometimes at nearly half the price of previous seasons".
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2026
The series had a successful reboot as Gen Z viewers continue to devour vintage programs.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 16, 2026
It didn’t take me long to devour the entire box of raisins.
From "Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina" by Michaela DePrince
In India's tech capital Bengaluru, the morning "rush hour" lasts so long it devours half the workday, throttling productivity in a city often viewed as the poster child of a booming economy.
From Barron's ● Nov. 27, 2025
That hot, hard rock devours conventional drill bits and makes a hash of the concrete usually poured deep underground around the steel pipes required to line such a well and keep it from collapsing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
In the show, rare glimpses of his inner turmoil come when he devours a lemon tart or a chocolate bar with a pleasureless intensity.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2024
With each strike, he devours the essence of liberty and justice, leaving behind a trail of desolation and despair.
From Salon ● May 8, 2024
Kasim devours a chicken breast topped with cabbage and pickles and other things I can’t identify.
From "American Street" by Ibi Zoboi
Such heat contributed to ideal conditions for wildfires that devoured swathes of land across the continent.
From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026
He studied physics and philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he met his wife, devoured Einstein’s original papers and investigated parallel universes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 8, 2026
It arrived at the peak of unscripted television’s popularity — a period when audiences devoured shows like “Survivor” and “American Idol” at their regularly scheduled times on television.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2026
"We have tentatively suggested that the long palps might allow the male to keep a safer distance during mating and help him avoid being attacked and devoured by the highly aggressive female."
From Science Daily ● Apr. 6, 2026
“In no way, madam, unless you be a priest, a magician, or a man of medicine. My wife is being devoured by a stomach worm.”
From "The Midwife's Apprentice" by Karen Cushman
The candidates are bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, who are currently busy devouring as many calories as possible to fatten up for winter hibernation.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
Farmers worldwide had hoped China’s 1.4 billion mouths would continue devouring more foreign produce.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Davis loved to read and collect books, devouring anything from John Updike and Margaret Atwood, among other authors, a passion that necessitated having bookshelves in every room of his home.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
Toiling around the clock, haggard Indonesian firefighters on Borneo island cannot keep up with the blazes devouring landscapes and shrouding communities in a cloying haze.
From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026
And yet there she sat, in a chair right next to him, devouring a plate of greasy pork chops and fried okra.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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.
