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WordNet
gnaw at

v. become ground down or deteriorate; "Her confidence eroded" [syn: erode, gnaw, eat at, wear away]

Usage examples of "gnaw at".

Now they gazed at the main screen where the spectacle at the warp point was displayed: explosions so intense they must surely gnaw at the fabric of space itself but veiled by a surrounding haze of superheated gas, a nebula of man's creation.

Terrors and blasphemies gnaw at one another for space, and there is more evil in the lesser ones than in the greater.

Never to raise her thumbnail to her teeth like a desperately unhappy teen-age girl and gnaw at the cuticle until she tasted blood.

He's let bitterness and self-pity gnaw at him until it's eaten half way through his heart.

But they seemed to be in no hurry, both settling down to split the last long bones and gnaw at joints.

He was wailing, clinging to his mother and even trying to gnaw at her blood-streaked breast.

Arilyn felt no pain, but a twinge of worry began to gnaw at the corner of her mind.