Eat up meaning
Eat up means to eat all of your food. It can also mean to use a large amount of time, money or space.
eat something up
eat up · ate · eaten · eating
Eat up your vegetables, then you can have dessert.
Eat up meanings and examples
3 meanings, each with its own CEFR level. A level marked ~ is our estimate: Oxford and Cambridge give none for that meaning.
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1
Eat all of your food
eat something up
- Eat up your vegetables, then you can have dessert.
- The kids ate up every last chip.
- Don’t throw that pasta away. I’ll eat it up tomorrow.
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2
Use a large amount of time, money or space
eat something up
- Rent eats up half of my salary.
- Watching videos on the train eats my data up.
- The long meeting ate up the whole morning.
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3
Make someone feel a strong bad feeling all the time
eat somebody up
- Jealousy was eating him up.
- Don’t let guilt eat you up. It wasn’t your fault.
- The worry ate her up until the results came.
Café orders
New friends
At the airport
Slova
Use eat up in real conversations
- Learn new words with picture cards
- Talk with Felix, an AI tutor, about the things you love
- Short lessons at your level, a few minutes a day
Is eat up separable?
Eat up is separable: eat up your soup or eat your soup up. With a pronoun, it goes in the middle: eat it up. As an order, it can be alone: Eat up!
The feeling meaning is usually in the continuous form with the person in the middle: It’s eating me up.
Verb tenses for eat up
| Present | I eat up · she eats up |
|---|---|
| Past | ate up |
| Present perfect | have eaten up |
| -ing form | eating up |
Common mistakes with eat up
What learners often say, and what to say instead.
Wrong: This soup is lovely. I’ll eat up it.
Right: This soup is lovely. I’ll eat it up.
A pronoun goes between eat and up.
Wrong: My car eats up a lot of petrol money for me.
Right: My car eats up a lot of my money.
Eat up already means use; for me is extra.
Wrong: The secret was eating up me.
Right: The secret was eating me up.
The person goes between eat and up.
Synonyms and opposites of eat up
Words close to it, and words that mean the opposite.
Similar
- finisheat or drink all of something
- use upuse all of something so none is left
- gobble upeat something very fast and hungrily
Opposite
- leavenot eat all your food: She left her carrots
- pick ateat only small bits because you are not hungry
Eat up quiz
Three quick questions. Pick an answer to see if it is right and why.
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1Come on, ___ your dinner. It’s getting cold.
Eat up means eat all of your food.
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2Choose the right sentence.
The pronoun goes in the middle: ate it up.
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3“Travel costs eat up most of my budget.” What does the speaker mean?
Eat up money or time means use a lot of it.
More phrasal verbs with eat
2 phrasal verbs start with eat. Test yourself on all of them in a few minutes.
Eat up FAQ
Questions people ask about eat up.
What does eat up mean in a text or online?
Informally, eat it up or ate that up can mean someone loved something and accepted it with no questions: The fans ate it up.
What is the difference between eat up and eat out?
Eat up means eat all your food. Eat out means eat at a restaurant.
What does it’s eating me up mean?
It means a worry or bad feeling is always on your mind: Not telling her the truth is eating me up.
Use eat up in real conversations
In Slova you learn new words with picture cards, then use them when you talk about the things you love. A few minutes a day, at your level.