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

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Etymology

Origin of gobble¹

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

Origin of gobble²

First recorded in 1670–80; variant of gabble

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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

Kiddos may ask to hold the toasted hazelnuts—you can always serve them on the side—but they’ll gobble up the combination of queso and Parmigiano.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026

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

They allege Lucky Strike uses a monopoly scheme to gobble up mom-and-pop bowling alleys and transform them into a “mousetrap” model, luring people in just to upcharge them on shoe rentals and concessions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

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 guileless Lowen gobbles it up, spinning an elaborate fantasy about the woman Verity was before the accident.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

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

He dunks the bread in the runny yolks and gobbles it down.

From "The Boy Who Dared" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

But they are increasingly working together with Chinese competitors in overseas markets, where Chinese carmakers have gobbled up market share.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

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

On the remote east side of Mono Lake, he said the animals gobbled down grass, roots and all, depriving certain birds of the worms that live in the vegetation — their sustenance.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 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

Sweet rolls gobbled, milk gulped, jacket zipped, and it’s time for me to go.

From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper

For close to two decades, this crowd-pleasing pop superstar has been topping charts and gobbling up Grammys with detailed recreations of an ever-expanding array of past musical styles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

The shift is a stark example of one of the biggest trends on Wall Street: private-credit firms gobbling up life insurers and funneling policy premiums into high-interest private loans.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 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

To meet those demands, Goldman is gobbling up active-ETF managers, having bought Innovator Capital Management for some $2 billion earlier this year.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

He spent hours communing with them, preening their feathers with a stick while sitting in the dust and gobbling softly at them.

From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly

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Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow

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