consuming

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of consume.

   Flames were consuming the old barn before help arrived.

   Consuming that much sugar each day is bad for your teeth.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of consume: fire consuming a barn, a household consuming its savings, worry consuming a mind. Nearly all of these take a direct object, so the form usually stands before one. The intransitive 'wasting away' use is obsolete. When it means occupying the thoughts, it shades into the adjective for an absorbing passion. As a gerund it overlaps the noun for the process.

2. 2
   adjective

   So strong or absorbing that it dominates a person's attention or interest.

   Like a flame that draws all the air in the room toward it.

   A consuming ambition drove her to work eighteen-hour days.

   His consuming passion for chess left little time for anything else.

   Similarabsorbing, overwhelming, obsessive, overpowering, compelling

   Note

   Here a feeling has taken over a person, and the word typically comes before its noun: a consuming passion, a consuming ambition. Unlike the bare participle, it can be graded as more consuming or most consuming. That is the clearest sign it has become a true adjective. One ambition can be more consuming than another, but a fire is simply consuming a barn or not.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act or process by which something is gradually used up, eaten, or otherwise spent.

   Like a candle steadily burning down to nothing.

   The rapid consuming of natural resources alarmed environmental groups.

   Daily consuming of electricity in the factory exceeded all forecasts.

   Similarconsumption, use, depletion, expenditure

   Oppositeconservation, production

   Note

   The gerund has hardened into a countable noun with a plural, consumings, which lets a writer count separate acts of using up. Hans Blumenberg's The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1985) calls world incinerations "the self-consumings of the cosmic process." For the general idea, consumption is the usual word. This form typically appears with of, as in the consuming of resources.

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