devour

Anglo-Norman devourer, Old French devorer (Modern French dévorer), from Latin dēvorō, from vorō.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈvaʊ(w)ə(ɹ)/

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• Rhymes: -aʊə(ɹ)
• Rhymes: -aʊ.ə(ɹ)

devour (third-person singular simple present devours, present participle devouring, simple past and past participle devoured)

1. To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.
2. To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.

   The fire was devouring the building.

   • Bible, Isaiah i. 20

     If ye refuse […] ye shall be devoured with the sword.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion:

     Blast after blast, fiery outbreak after fiery outbreak, like a flaming barrage from within, […] most of Edison's grounds soon became an inferno. As though on an incendiary rampage, the fires systematically devoured the contents of Edison's headquarters and facilities.

3. To take in avidly with the intellect or with one's gaze.

   She intended to devour the book.

   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

4. To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner.

   After the death of his wife, he was devoured by grief.

• gobble, gorge, consume, devastate, overwhelm, wolf