Word.ws English Dictionary

ate up

ate up is the simple past of eat up.

Meaning of eat up

Verb

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

  1. (ambitransitive) To consume completely.
    • He was so hungry that he ate up everything on his plate.
  2. (figuratively, slang, transitive) To cause (someone) to obsess; to figuratively consume (someone).
    • His anger has been eating him up.
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To subtract, use up.
    • His behavior has eaten up all the goodwill we felt towards him.
  4. (figuratively, informal, transitive) To accept or believe entirely, immediately, and without questioning.
    • She ate up everything that her image consultant said.
  5. (slang, transitive) To acclaim or praise (someone or something); to consume (absorb information).
    • They eat up every book he puts out.
  6. (US, informal, transitive) To find something to be very cute.
    • You're so cute, I could just eat you up!

See all 9 meanings of eat up

Adjective

ate up (comparative more ate up, superlative most ate up)

  1. (Appalachia, slang) thoroughly weakened by disease, especially infection or cancer.

Forms of ate up

comparativemore ate up
superlativemost ate up

Questions about ate up

What does ate up mean?
Ate up means thoroughly weakened by disease, especially infection or cancer.
What is ate up the simple past of?
Ate up is the simple past of eat up.
What part of speech is ate up?
Ate up is an adjective.

Words near ate up in the dictionary

  1. ate the leek
  2. ate the mic
  3. ate the onion
  4. ate the seed corn
  5. ate twat
  6. ate up
  7. ate up with a spoon
  8. ate, breathed, and slept
  9. ATEAC
  10. atebrin
  11. atebrine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate up (page history and authors); eat up (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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Cite this entry: “ate up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ate_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.