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

Etymology

Origin of gobble¹

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

Origin of gobble²

First recorded in 1670–80; variant of gabble

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

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

The sprawling, power-hungry sites, used to store critical IT infrastructure like servers, are being built worldwide by companies and countries as AI applications gobble ever greater computing power.

From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026

Huge exporters—including the U.S.—are vying to gobble up market share in a world where the prospect for demand growth was already uncertain before a once-in-a-generation energy shock.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026

There’s silence as we sigh in relief, then gobble some of our creation down like starving puppies.

From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

Micron’s profits have surged as Big Tech’s AI expansion gobbles up the supply of available memory chips.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 23, 2026

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

From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2026

The idea is to ensure XTX can keep training its models cheaply even as the AI boom gobbles up ever more data-center capacity worldwide.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 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

The catcher blocks the ball with his chest protector, gobbles it up, and checks Luis down at second.

From "A High Five for Glenn Burke" by Phil Bildner

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

A never-ending stream of data about us being gobbled up by thousands of companies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 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

Out in the dust-clouded yard, Riker’s tyrannosaurus leaned down and gobbled up a man in a prison uniform, then swept its tail in a wide arc, clobbering two knuckleskulls and sending their riders flying.

From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older

"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

But he learned how to make pizza, and how much customers loved gobbling it up, while working at different gas station mini-marts around rural Nevada.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2026

He’d just finished gobbling down the food when the phone rang.

From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow