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

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

For all the recent worries that AI will destroy whole industries and gobble up tech’s cash, Chronert says the ongoing spending boom will boost profits this year.

From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026

We’ll tackle the elevated costs of food, energy, medicine and other necessities that gobble up middle-income wages.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026

“Sinners” is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2025

“That’s because you’re a wolf.You’d gobble him up instead.”

From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

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

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 23, 2026

Its fantastical elements, from the ambush on Troy led by Matt Damon’s Odysseus to a giant cyclops that gobbles his men in a cave, were created primarily with physical effects for a more visceral impact.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

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

Nicola snatches the chocolate cake and gobbles it.

From "The Unfinished Angel" by Sharon Creech

All that promise started to wither around 2015, as social media giants gobbled up more and more of the profits that kept earlier hangouts afloat.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 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

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

Of course, not all shipwrecks find themselves in such relatively hospitable conditions—the Titanic, for instance, is slowly being gobbled up by iron-eating bacteria.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

Each hunter may have gobbled down as much as ten pounds of bison flesh a day.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

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

They act as a giant blender, gobbling up mountains of data across the web, including state-controlled media.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 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 the Soviet Union, which had been left out of the Munich Agreement, the rate at which Germany was gobbling up European territory was seriously alarming.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein

Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow