Emily Dickinson Lexicon

EAT, v.i.

1. To take food; to feed; to take a meal, or to board. He did eat continually at the king's table. – 2 Sam. ix. Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners? Matth. ix.
2. To take food; to be maintained in food. To eat, or to eat in or into, is to make way by corrosion; to gnaw; to enter by gradually wearing or separating the parts of a substance. A cancer eats into the flesh. Their word will eat as doth a canker. 2 Tim. ii. To eat out, to consume. Their word will eat out the vitals of religion, corrupt and destroy it. Anon.