Word
eaten
Phoneticseat·en
US/ˈitən/
UK/ˈiːtən/
Definitions
01past participle of eat
v. the form of 'eat' used with 'have' or 'has' to show that an action is finished.
v. the past participle of 'eat', used to form the present perfect, past perfect, and passive voice.
“I have already eaten lunch, so I am not very hungry now.”
“By the time the late guests arrived at the gala, the main course had already been eaten by those who were punctual.”
Usage
Always requires an auxiliary verb like 'have', 'has', 'had', or 'be' when used as a verb.
Pitfall
I have ate my dinner already.
I have eaten my dinner already.
Use 'ate' for the simple past and 'eaten' after the helping verb 'have'.
02consumed
adj. describes something that has been used as food or destroyed by something.
adj. functioning as a participial adjective to describe something that has been consumed or eroded.
“The half-eaten apple was left on the table all afternoon.”
“The wooden beams were badly moth-eaten, suggesting the structure had been neglected for several decades.”
Usage
Often appears in compound adjectives like 'moth-eaten' or 'half-eaten'.
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English eten, from Old English eten, from Proto-West Germanic etan, from Proto-Germanic etanaz; morphologically eat + -en.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/eaten