What is "eating"

Eat \Eat\ ([=e]t), v. t. [imp. Ate ([=a]t; 277), Obsolescent & Colloq. Eat ([e^]t); p. p. Eaten ([=e]t"'n), Obs. or Colloq. Eat ([e^]t); p. pr. & vb. n. Eating.] [OE. eten, AS. etan; akin to OS. etan, OFries. eta, D. eten, OHG. ezzan, G. essen, Icel. eta, Sw. ["a]ta, Dan. [ae]de, Goth. itan, Ir. & Gael. ith, W. ysu, L. edere, Gr. 'e`dein, Skr. ad. [root]6. Cf. Etch, Fret to rub, Edible.]

1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. ``To eat grass as oxen.''
   --Dan. iv. 25.

   They . . . ate the sacrifices of the dead.
   --Ps. cvi. 28.

   The lean . . . did eat up the first seven fat kine.
   --Gen. xli. 20.

   The lion had not eaten the carcass.
   --1 Kings xiii. 28.

   With stories told of many a feat, How fairy Mab the junkets eat.
   --Milton.

   The island princes overbold Have eat our substance.
   --Tennyson.

   His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.
   --Thackeray.

2. To corrode, as metal, by rust; to consume the flesh, as a cancer; to waste or wear away; to destroy gradually; to cause to disappear.

   To eat humble pie. See under Humble.

   To eat of (partitive use). ``Eat of the bread that can not waste.''
   --Keble.

   To eat one's words, to retract what one has said. (See the Citation under Blurt.)

   To eat out, to consume completely. ``Eat out the heart and comfort of it.''
   --Tillotson.

   To eat the wind out of a vessel (Naut.), to gain slowly to windward of her.

   Syn: To consume; devour; gnaw; corrode.

Eating \Eat"ing\, n.

1. The act of tasking food; the act of consuming or corroding.

2. Something fit to be eaten; food; as, a peach is good eating. [Colloq.]

   Eating house, a house where cooked provisions are sold, to be eaten on the premises. [1913 Webster] ||

1. Suitable to be eaten without being cooked. n. 1 The act of ingesting food. 2 (label en informal dialectal) food; cooking, cuisine. 3 The act of corroding or consuming some substance. v

2. (present participle of eat English)

n. the act of consuming food [syn: feeding]

Eating (also known as consuming) is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for growth. Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter, and detritivores eat detritus. Fungi digest organic matter outside of their bodies as opposed to animals that digest their food inside their bodies. For humans, eating is an activity of daily living. Some individuals may limit their amount of nutritional intake. This may be a result of a lifestyle choice, due to hunger or famine, as part of a diet or as religious fasting.

Eating is a 1990 American comedy-drama film starring Nelly Alard, Lisa Blake Richards, Frances Bergen, Mary Crosby, Gwen Welles, Elizabeth Kemp, Marina Gregory and written and directed by Henry Jaglom.