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 AI boom shows no sign of easing as Anthropic prepares to go public and businesses gobble up durable goods.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026
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
In recent days, she said, she’s been surprised by the eye-popping household incomes of those trying to gobble up typical two-bedroom apartments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026
“Because we gobble up all the nasty little insects that are gobbling up all the farmer’s crops. It helps enormously, and we ourselves don’t charge a penny for our services.”
From "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl
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
Market research firms like IDC and Counterpoint Research have indicated that the weakness is in the Android market, while Apple gobbles up market share amid a memory chip shortage.
From Barron's ● Apr. 16, 2026
Charlie can’t finish her pretzel, so Mama gobbles it up.
From "Isaiah Dunn Is My Hero" by Kelly J. Baptist
The iPhone maker for years bullied flash-storage makers into steep discounts—until AI hyperscalers bid up prices and gobbled up supply.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
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
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
High-school students, among them former classmates of Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, chanted cheerleader rhymes, bubbled bubble gum, gobbled hot dogs and soda pop.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
In the studio, Rosalía drew on the flamenco she was gobbling up at school.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 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
But now AI servers are gobbling up rapidly increasing volumes of those chips, so even a company as rich and powerful as Apple is struggling to secure supply.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
He’d just finished gobbling down the food when the phone rang.
From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
