Word.ws English Dictionary

eat one's heart out

eat one's heart out verb: to feel overwhelming sorrow, jealousy, or longing; to grieve.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To feel overwhelming sorrow, jealousy, or longing; to grieve.
    • The Brazilians are eating their hearts out over their defeat by Germany in the World Cup.
    • Eat your heart out, pal! We won the title!

Forms of eat one's heart out

third-person singular presenteats one's heart out
present participleeating one's heart out
pastate one's heart out
past participleeaten one's heart out

Origin of eat one's heart out

Disputed. Three schools of thought exist: * From "This will eat your heart out.", suggesting that the recipient of the taunt will have their heart, the core of their being, eaten out with desire, bitterness, or pain. * From the 16th century "to eat one's own heart" (to suffer in silence from anguish or grief), possibly from the Bible "to eat one's own flesh" (to be lazy). The phrase "to eat one's heart out" appears as a formulaic phrase in the Iliad, meaning to experience extreme grief. (For instance, Iliad.24.128, and many other locations.) * When used as the taunt "Eat your heart out, [someone]!" a suggestion that the recipient of the taunt "eat up" as much as they like. Figuratively more akin to "experience me besting you."

Questions about eat one's heart out

What does eat one's heart out mean?
Eat one's heart out means to feel overwhelming sorrow, jealousy, or longing; to grieve.
What part of speech is eat one's heart out?
Eat one's heart out is a verb.
What is the past tense of eat one's heart out?
The past tense of eat one's heart out is ate one's heart out.

Words near eat one's heart out in the dictionary

  1. eat one's fill
  2. eat one's gun
  3. eat one's hat
  4. eat one's head off
  5. eat one's heart
  6. eat one's heart out
  7. eat one's own
  8. eat one's own dog food
  9. eat one's pride
  10. eat one's seed corn
  11. eat one's terms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eat one's heart out (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-eat one's heart out.ogg.

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