gobble
1 Americanverb (used without object)
noun
-
gobbles
plural
noun
interjection
verb
verb
-
to eat or swallow (food) hastily and in large mouthfuls
-
informal to snatch
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
Vocabulary lists containing gobble
"When Cultures Meet"
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Crenshaw
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The Circuit
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
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
But I think that people read that as he wants to gobble up every pie he sees.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 5, 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
Jackrabbits or other critters that need the water encased in the plant often gobble them up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2025
It was so good, she had to remember her manners and not gobble it down.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
Broadcasters are struggling as Americans cut the cable cord and social media gobbles up local advertising dollars.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
The answer, for that sample, was: mostly Desmodesmus, a green algae that gobbles up phosphorus and nitrogen.
From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2026
Lately, she’s making a feast of roles that all remind me of that old sitcom episode in which Lucille Ball gobbles chocolates on a conveyor belt.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 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 loves it when there’s a bug under a piece of junk—she pounces on it and gobbles it right up.
From "Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer" by Kelly Jones
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
He paralyzed the Oklahoma City offense and gobbled up every loose ball.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 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
She gobbled gigantic green vitamin pills, ate lots of fresh oranges and apples, and she had this habit of touching her bulging belly and mumbling a prayer.
From "Out of My Mind" by Sharon M. Draper
Tech giants are gobbling up memory chips for AI servers, leaving Apple with soaring component costs that Tim Cook says will inevitably be passed on to consumers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
Grogu does a lot of it, at points gobbling a scorpion and the Star Wars version of popcorn.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
The marauding monkeys brazenly snatch ice cream, cakes and crisps from unwitting tourists in addition to gobbling abandoned leftovers from bins or food directly offered to them.
From Barron's ● May 22, 2026
Elon Musk is going all-in on artificial intelligence, but his xAI has been gobbling up SpaceX’s cash, diverting attention away from the rocket-launch and satellite operations.
From MarketWatch ● May 21, 2026
He’d just finished gobbling down the food when the phone rang.
From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
