Eat up means to finish eating, to eat everything. Adults hurry children along at the table with it: Eat up! In the second meaning, something eats up time, money or space: a commute, rent, an app on your phone.
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eat up; eat + it/sth + up; sth eats up + time/money/space
- Eat up your pasta, we have to leave for the station in ten minutes.
- The kids ate up all the pancakes before I even sat down.
- Rent eats up almost half of my salary, so I'm looking for a cheaper flat.
What changed
First versionWe usually eat up on Fridays because nobody wants to cook.
RevisionWe usually eat out on Fridays because nobody wants to cook.
Up and out are easy to mix up, but they mean different things. Eat up means to finish everything on your plate. Eat out means to eat away from home, in a café or restaurant. The reason, nobody wants to cook, shows the sentence is about going out to eat.
In the second meaning, eat up describes a resource that disappears faster than you'd like: The new game eats up a lot of storage. It's close to use up, but use up means to use all of something, while eat up means to greedily take a large part of it.
Your turn
My phone is always full because this video app ___ so much storage.
Show the answer
eats up — The app takes up a lot of storage, it “eats” it, so eats up. Eat out means to eat at a restaurant, which you can't say about a phone.
Describe what eats up your time or money. Say roughly how much it takes and what you want to do about it.
My daily commute eats up almost two hours, so I want to find a job closer to home.
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