consumption
- 1The act of eating, drinking, or using something.
Nutritionists track the consumption of processed foods across different age groups.
Moderate consumption of caffeine is considered safe for most adults.
Similarintake, ingestion, eating, drinking, use
Note
Latin built the word from con-, 'together', and sumo, 'take', so at root it means a taking-in; English formed it as consume plus -tion. It is usually uncountable and takes of before whatever is used up: the consumption of snails, of caffeine, of prohibited substances. In official statements it serves as the neutral word for taking something in. A Guardia Civil spokesperson used it that way in 2025, saying such substances' consumption was not authorised.
- 2The amount of something that is eaten, drunk, or used.
The new appliance cut the building's energy consumption by a third.
Analysts compared regional water consumption before and after the drought.
Similaruse, usage, intake, expenditure
Oppositeproduction
Note
Where the act of using is about doing, here consumption is a figure that can be measured, compared and cut. A noun in front usually names what is used, as in energy, water or fuel consumption. Economists scale it up to gross national consumption. A quick test tells the two apart: if you can ask 'how much?', this is the meaning.
- 3The act of using something up or destroying it.
The wildfire's consumption of the hillside left only blackened stumps behind.
Economists warn that the consumption of fossil fuels is outpacing discovery.
Similardepletion, destruction, exhaustion, use
Oppositeconservation, preservation
Note
Here the consumer is often not a person but a force that uses something up for good, such as a fire or an engine. The agent tends to sit in the possessive, and the thing destroyed follows of, as in the fire's consumption of the forest. Modern Railways in 1963 tied fuel consumption to driving methods. That use shows how the destroying sense shades into plain using up.
- 4The progressive wasting away of the human body as a result of disease.
Late-stage cancer often brings a relentless consumption of the body's reserves.
Nurses documented the steady consumption that accompanied his chronic illness.
Similarwasting, emaciation
Note
In pathology the word names the wasting itself, not any one disease: the body breaks down its own muscle and fat faster than it can rebuild them. It describes what illness does to a patient, which is why it can follow cancer or any chronic condition. Keep it distinct from the old name for tuberculosis, where the same word became a diagnosis.
Less common meanings
- 5A former name for tuberculosis and related wasting diseases marked by lung infection and progressive physical decline.
Physicians often sent patients with consumption to dry mountain climates in hope of recovery.
And then as to your ſcurvys, and gouts, rheumatiſms, conſumptions, coughs and catarrhs, tar-vvater and turpentine vvill make you as ſound as a roach.
1763, Samuel Foote, The Mayor of Garret. A ComedySimilartuberculosis, TB
Note
The word became a diagnosis because the illness seemed to consume the body, and it dominated medical and everyday writing before the bacterial cause of tuberculosis was identified in 1882. It once counted freely: in Samuel Foote's The Mayor of Garret (1763), a character promises tar-water against 'scurvys, and gouts, rheumatisms, consumptions'. Use it today in historical writing or period fiction. In a modern clinical context, say tuberculosis.
- 6A former term for the bodily decline and death brought about by chronic alcoholism.
The obituary discreetly noted consumption rather than name his lifelong habit.
Neighbors whispered that consumption had taken the innkeeper, worn out by years at the bottle.
Note
A polite cover for drink: a death was put down to wasting rather than to the bottle. This use shares its spelling and its grim outcome with the tuberculosis meaning. As a result, an older obituary that blames consumption may mean either. Treat it as a period euphemism to recognize when reading, not one to revive.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of consumption apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
This word came into Middle English as consumpcioun from Old French consumpcion, which came from Latin cōnsūmptiō. That Latin noun was formed from cōnsūmō ("take; consume"), itself made up of con- ("with, together") and sūmō ("take"). It is equivalent to consume plus -tion.