Word.ws English Dictionary

ate one's young

ate one's young is the simple past of eat one's young.

Meaning of eat one's young

Verb

eat one's young (third-person singular simple present eats one's young, present participle eating one's young, simple past ate one's young, past participle eaten one's young)

  1. To betray a constituent or charge out of self-serving interests or desperation.
    • With bankruptcy looming, the corporation eventually began eating its young; massive layoffs were announced, and all employee benefits and bonuses were suspended.

Questions about ate one's young

What is ate one's young the simple past of?
Ate one's young is the simple past of eat one's young.

Words near ate one's young in the dictionary

  1. ate one's pride
  2. ate one's seed corn
  3. ate one's terms
  4. ate one's Wheaties
  5. ate one's words
  6. ate one's young
  7. ate out
  8. ate out of someone's hand
  9. ate out of the palm of someone's hand
  10. ate pussy
  11. ate shit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate one's young (page history and authors); eat one's young (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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