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

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

Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that FIFA, in its desire to gobble every dollar, has unlocked a new luxury market.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026

So after my fitting at Hank’s, Mom and I go through the Taco Bell drive-through, and I gobble down lunch and get back to school in time for fifth and sixth periods.

From "The Running Dream" by Wendelin Van Draanen

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

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

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

She gobbles up the last bite of cake.

From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir

Having been gobbled up like a meal worm, Jay dredges up flashbacks of his father’s lectures in whale anatomy.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026

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

For decades, the stocks of major global miners have essentially been a proxy bet on China’s economy, as its infrastructure and real-estate buildout gobbled up huge volumes of the iron ore that powered miners’ profits.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026

‘Me is the only one what won’t be gobbled up because giants is never eating giants. Me and Sophie is the only safe ones because I is hiding her if that happens.’

From "The BFG" by Roald Dahl

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

"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

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

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Related Words

• devour
• gulp
• guzzle
• swallow

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