Devour Meaning
/dɪˈvaʊə(ɹ)/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
verbTo eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.
verbTo rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.
Sentence Examples
I will devour you little girl.
The strong shall devour the meek's reward.
Because you devour in one meal what was given for three.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The hungry lion began to ____ its prey within seconds of catching it.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I will ____ you little girl.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English devouren, from Old French devorer (Modern French dévorer), from Latin dēvorō, from vorō.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future."
— 2017 [2013], Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Press, →ISBN, page 571:
"If ye refuse[…]ye shall be devoured with the sword."
— 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 1:20:
"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."
— 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion:
"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 flavor."
— 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), page 373, column 2:
"My dreams were largely based on the works of Dickens (his Mugby Junction stories), Thackeray (Jeames on the Gauge Question), and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories I kept devouring with gluttonous abandon."
— 2026 April 1, Vitali Vitaliev, “Literature on the track”, in RAIL, number 1058, page 68:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The hungry lion began to ____ its prey within seconds of catching it.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I will ____ you little girl.