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

Balds — fish lovers themselves — can consume hooks and sinkers when they gobble down their prey, potentially poisoning them, Koh said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 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

Grant said he tried to make the deal work, but ultimately determined the tax would gobble up too much of the project’s future value.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 20, 2026

Jackrabbits or other critters that need the water encased in the plant often gobble them up.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2025

And beneath them, down in the clear water, yard-long catfish lay on the sandy bottom, waiting to gobble up any young birds that happened to fall out of the nests.

From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson

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

From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2026

The story is simple: The dad flusters, fidgets and whines; the girl gobbles room service as though aspiring to become human foie gras.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

Meanwhile, the consumer-electronics world faces an acute memory-chip shortage, as AI-infrastructure demand gobbles up semiconductor supplies and thus threatens to drive up the price of things like smartphones and laptops.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 25, 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

He gobbles down the treat, never suspecting a pill is hidden inside it.

From "A Mango-Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass

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

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

Since the books became an international phenomenon, we’ve lined up for the resulting movies, gobbled up licensed merchandise, and bought tickets to its hit play and theme parks.

From Salon ● Apr. 2, 2026

After he retired, the machine gobbled up the one independent office left.

From "Go Set a Watchman: A Novel" by Harper Lee

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

The agriculture industry is warning that the AI-focused facilities are gobbling up farmland acreage, electricity and water needed to raise livestock and grow crops.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 11, 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

To my right, from far up on a hillside, there was a loud gobbling and a beating of heavy wings.

From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls

Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow