Consume

How to spell consume

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce consume

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does consume mean?

1. verbTo use up, eat, drink, or otherwise take in a resource or substance entirely.

Consume in a sentence

• Older appliances tend to consume far more electricity than modern ones.

• Long meetings consume most of her working day.

Where does consume come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Consume comes from the Latin verb consumere, which combined the intensive prefix con-, meaning 'completely' or 'altogether', with sumere, meaning 'to take up' or 'to use'. The literal sense was therefore 'to take up wholly', and from there it stretched to mean to use up, eat, drink, or destroy entirely. English borrowed it in the late 1300s through Old French, and early uses often carried the darker idea of being eaten away or wasted, as when fire or disease 'consumed' a body, which is why the old word for tuberculosis was 'consumption'. The same sumere root surfaces in relatives such as 'assume', 'presume', and 'resume', all sharing that buried '-sume' spelling. Remembering that the ending is the Latin 'sume' (take), not a plain 'soom', helps fix the silent-feeling final e in place.

How the word is built

• con- (completely, altogether)
• sume (from sumere: to take up)