different between devour vs gnaw

English

Etymology

Anglo-Norman devourer, Old French devorer (Modern French dévorer), from Latin d?vor?, from vor?.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??va?(w)?(?)/
• Rhymes: -a??(?)
• Rhymes: -a?.?(?)

Verb

devour (third-person singular simple present devours, present participle devouring, simple past and past participle devoured)

1. To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.
2. To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.
3. To take in avidly with the intellect or with one's gaze.

   • Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

4. To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner.

Synonyms

• gobble, gorge, consume, devastate, overwhelm, wolf

Translations

English

Etymology

From Middle English gnawen, gna?en, from Old English gnagan, from Proto-Germanic *gnagan?. Cognate with Dutch knagen, German nagen, Norwegian Bokmål gnage, Norwegian Nynorsk gnaga, Swedish gnaga. Probably from Proto-Indo-European *g?n?g?- (“to gnaw, scratch”)

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: nô, IPA^(key): /n??/
• Rhymes: -??
• (US) enPR: nô, IPA^(key): /n?/
• (cot–caught merger) enPR: nä, IPA^(key): /n?/
• Homophone: nor (in non-rhotic accents with the horse-hoarse merger)

Verb

gnaw (third-person singular simple present gnaws, present participle gnawing, simple past gnawed or (dialectal) gnew, past participle gnawed or (archaic) gnawn)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To bite something persistently, especially something tough.
2. (intransitive) To produce excessive anxiety or worry.

3. To corrode; to fret away; to waste.

Derived terms

• begnaw
• gnawer
• gnawable
• ungnawed

Related terms

• nag

Translations

Noun

gnaw (plural gnaws)

1. the act of gnawing

Anagrams

• AgNW, Ngwa, Wang, g'wan, gawn, gwan, wang

Middle Welsh

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?nau?/

Noun

gnaw

1. Soft mutation of knaw.

Mutation