Word.ws English Dictionary

eat someone out of house and home

eat someone out of house and home verb: to consume so much of someone's store of food that little or none is left for the owner.

Verb

eat someone out of house and home (third-person singular simple present eats someone out of house and home, present participle eating someone out of house and home, simple past ate someone out of house and home, past participle eaten someone out of house and home)

  1. (idiomatic) To consume so much of someone's store of food that little or none is left for the owner.
    • [H]e hath eaten me out of houſe and home, he hath put all my ſubſtance into that fat belly of his, but I will haue ſome of it out againe, or I will ride thee a nights like the mare.c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth, […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600...

Forms of eat someone out of house and home

third-person singular presenteats someone out of house and home
present participleeating someone out of house and home
pastate someone out of house and home
past participleeaten someone out of house and home

Origin of eat someone out of house and home

Appears in The Second Shepherds' Play by The Wakefield Master (1400-1450), later used by the English playwright William Shakespeare (1564 (baptised) – 1616) in his play Henry IV, Part 2 (c. 1596–1599): see the quotation.

Questions about eat someone out of house and home

What does eat someone out of house and home mean?
Eat someone out of house and home means to consume so much of someone's store of food that little or none is left for the owner.
What part of speech is eat someone out of house and home?
Eat someone out of house and home is a verb.
What is the past tense of eat someone out of house and home?
The past tense of eat someone out of house and home is ate someone out of house and home.

Words near eat someone out of house and home in the dictionary

  1. eat out of the palm of someone's hand
  2. eat pussy
  3. eat shit
  4. eat someone alive
  5. eat someone for breakfast
  6. eat someone out of house and home
  7. eat someone's ass
  8. eat someone's dust
  9. eat someone's heart
  10. eat someone's lunch
  11. eat the baby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eat someone out of house and home (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 someone out of house and home.ogg.

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