eat someone out of house and home
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To eat excessively, depleting someone's food supply.
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
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Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: consume all of someone's food and resources
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
He I mean I know he eats you out of house and home, but he's quite a good lodger isn't he?
' You must eat your wife out of house and home, ' commented Duncan.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “eat someone out of house and home” mean?
To eat excessively, depleting someone's food supply. Literally: consume all of someone's food and resources
Is “eat someone out of house and home” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.