Word.ws English Dictionary

ate away

ate away is the simple past of eat away.

Meaning of eat away

Verb

eat away (third-person singular simple present eats away, present participle eating away, simple past ate away, past participle eaten away)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To physically corrode or erode (something) gradually.
    • The river bank had been eaten away over the years by the flood water.
    Synonyms:
    begnaw
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic, transitive) To destroy (something) gradually by an ongoing process.
    • At your Table I vvill proue / If I can eate avvay my loue.1602, [John or Joshua Cooke], A Pleasant Conceited Comedie, wherein is Shewed How a Man may Chuse a Good Wife from a Bad. […], London: […] Mathew Lawe, […], →OCLC; reprinted as How a Man may Choose a...
    Synonyms:
    corrode, erode
  3. (figuratively, idiomatic, specifically, transitive) Chiefly followed by at: of a circumstance, incident, etc.: to cause (someone) to feel guilty, troubled, or worried; to bother (see eat away at).
    • The guilt of having lied was eating away at him.

Questions about ate away

What is ate away the simple past of?
Ate away is the simple past of eat away.

Words near ate away in the dictionary

  1. ate an elephant one bite at a time
  2. ate and left no crumbs
  3. ate and ran
  4. ate and run
  5. ate ass
  6. ate away
  7. ate away at
  8. ate beaver
  9. ate boiled crow
  10. ate cookie
  11. ate crow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate away (page history and authors); eat away (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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