devour

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English devouren, also deworen,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French devorer (“to devour, swallow up”), whose stressed stem was devour-,^[4][5][6][2] from Latin dēvorō (“to swallow down, accept eagerly”),^[7][3][8][4] from dē- (“down”) and vorō (“to swallow, gulp”).^[7][3][8][5] Etymonline traces the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *gʷora- (“food, devouring”),^[7] the root that also gave voracious.^[7][9][10] The Anglo-Norman verb is recorded from the early 12th century, already meaning to swallow whole, to consume and to pillage.^[11] Merriam-Webster derives the English word from Middle French.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a beast, to eat up its prey greedily: about 1315, in the poems of William of Shoreham, where something is "of bestes deuoured".^[4][2] Barnhart dates the word to before 1333.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From animals the verb passed to people eating greedily, recorded in the Wycliffite Bible of 1382.^[4][2] By the late 14th century a person or an inanimate agent such as fire, the sword or plague could "devour" in the sense of destroying or wasting,^[7][4] a use Chaucer already has around 1374.^[4] Chaucer used the verb 17 times and Gower 22.^[12] Water or the earth could devour, engulf, from 1555.^[4] In the 16th century it came to mean being absorbed or engrossed by something, usually in the passive ("devoured by regret"), and taking something in greedily with the eyes or mind, as in devouring a book.^[5][7] Weekley notes that Spenser called fire "the devouring element".^[13] Johnson (1755) defined it first as eating up ravenously like a wild beast.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1315 – of a beast, to eat up prey.^[4][2]
• before 1340 – to consume or waste destructively.^[4]
• c. 1374 – of fire and other inanimate agents, to destroy.^[4][7]
• 1382 – of people, to eat greedily.^[4][2]
• 1555 – of water or the earth, to swallow up, engulf.^[4]
• 1580s – to take in greedily with the mind, as a book.^[7][5]
• 1620s – to take in eagerly with the eyes.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To eat something quickly and greedily: The hungry hikers devoured the whole loaf in minutes.^[9][10][5]
2. To destroy or consume something completely, as fire or flood does: The blaze devoured three barns.^[9][10][5]
3. To read, look at or take in something eagerly: He devoured every detective novel in the library.^[9][5][10]
4. To absorb or engross someone completely, usually in the passive: devoured by jealousy.^[10][5]
5. To swallow up or engulf.^[9][4]

Word family

• devourer
• devouringly
• devouringness
• undevoured
• interdevour

Related words

• voracious
• voracity
• carnivore

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.