to eat
- verb
- /it/
- Informal
- Worrying about the future can eat at your peace of mind.
- eat away at
- eat into the soul
You know, it'll eat at you, it'll eat you from the inside out.
- You know, it'll eat at you, it'll eat you from the inside out.
- Oh, my God, That would eat me up inside.
- And the fact that I didn't release it ate me, ate me up, drove me to in.
- I just feel like too many things, like, can eat me there.
Examples
-
I want to show them that, miraculously, you don't have to eat those feelings.
Fiction book (1992) -
These mistruths, they eat away at you at night.
-
But the big thing eating us up is our holding cost.
-
You could see him watch her sometimes and know it was eating his heart out.
Fiction book (1990) -
Fear and regret have eaten you alive.
-
I was fearful that after eating, she would be overwhelmed with guilt and anxiety.
Academic text (2004) -
Self-control and coping as mediators in the relationship between family functioning and eating attitudes and behavior.
Academic text (2003) -
Fresh-cut veggies, including ready-to-eat salads, account for most of these sales.
Academic text (2005) -
The uncertainty of the situation was eating him alive inside.
-
Her insecurities began to eat away at her confidence over time.
Synonyms
Gradually make someone feel worse or less confident
To make someone feel more and more upset or angry inside
To worry someone for a long time
Antonyms
Idioms
- Offensive
Tell someone in a rude way to go away or warn they will be badly embarrassed
- Offensive
Avoid mixing your personal life with your work life because it causes problems
- Informal
To feel very jealous or sad because someone else has what you want
- Jargon
Use a company's own products to show they work and learn from them
- Informal
To beat someone in business by taking their customers and sales
- Informal
To finish a very large task by doing small easy steps
- NSFW
To say as a joke that you will kill yourself because you feel very frustrated
- Informal
To say you are very sure something will not happen and would do something silly if it did
- Offensive
To say you want to kill yourself to show you feel very desperate, often offensive
- Informal
To eat so much at someone's home that they have almost no food left
- Informal
To speak or sing into a microphone with strong confidence and energy to make the audience pay attention
- Informal
A chant people use to protest the rich and call for sharing wealth, often in a joking way
- Offensive
A joking phrase that shows old ideas about how men should act
Phrasal Verbs
- Informal
To damage something slowly over time, for example a building or a person's confidence
Slowly damages metal, rock and someone's confidence by chemicals or steady pressure
Compounds
How Worrying
Surface Forms
Etymology
Eat can mean 'worry' because people used the picture of something slowly using you up to talk about feelings, like a worry that 'eats' you inside. So when we say 'don't let it eat you', we mean 'don't let it slowly destroy your peace'.