Pac-Man
Pac-Man noun: anything that consumes indiscriminately.
Noun
Pac-Man (plural Pac-Men)
- Anything that consumes indiscriminately.
- "Medicaid is becoming the Pac-Man of state government, eating up every dollar," remarked one official.1992, Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey M Berry, Jerry Goldman, The challenge of democracy: government in America
- Chlorine acts like a Pac-Man of the high atmosphere, gobbling one ozone molecule after another and then being regenerated to gobble again.1995, Bruce Piasecki, Corporate environmental strategy: the avalanche of change since Bhopal
Examples of Pac-Man in a sentence
- The ironic deconstruction of all meaningful discourse, including normative discourse, says Gergen, "is like a Pac-Man of social pattern, gobbling all that stands in its path."1995, J Richard Middleton, Brian J Walsh, Truth is stranger than it used to be: biblical faith in a postmodern age:
- Like the Pac-Man of garbage, Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI) is gobbling up smaller waste disposal firms — 113 in 1994 alone — as that industry becomes increasingly consolidated.1995, Patrick J Spain, James R Talbot, Hoover's Handbook of American Companies 1996:
Forms of Pac-Man
| plural | Pac-Men |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Pac Man |
Origin of Pac-Man
From the popular arcade game Pac-Man (1980) and its player character, a circle with a snapping mouth gobbling dots in a maze. The original Japanese title of Puck Man (パックマン) was derived from パクパク (pakupaku, “gobble gobble”) (onomatopoeic) and マン (man), from English man; the title was changed for the North American release to mitigate vandalism (Puck → fuck).
Phrases with Pac-Man
Questions about Pac-Man
- What does Pac-Man mean?
- Pac-Man means anything that consumes indiscriminately.
- How do you use Pac-Man in a sentence?
- The ironic deconstruction of all meaningful discourse, including normative discourse, says Gergen, "is like a Pac-Man of social pattern, gobbling all that stands in its path."
- What part of speech is Pac-Man?
- Pac-Man is a noun.
- What is the plural of Pac-Man?
- The plural of Pac-Man is Pac-Men.
Words near Pac-Man in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Pac-Man (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-Pac-Man.ogg.
Cite this entry: “Pac-Man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pac-man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.