to house = to eat

[Laurence Horn]

On Oct 23, 2013, at 9:51 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:

> If I had to guess, I'd say it's informed by the sense of "house"
> meaning "destroy or defeat completely." This 2002 Urban Dictionary
> entry for "housed" may help:
>
> http://housed.urbanup.com/7158623
> A shockingly complete and enthusiastic consumption.
> - Laura musy have been hungry, she totally housed that meat.
> - There is nothing left, Jess housed it all.
>
> Cf. other ways of expressing voracious eating, e.g. "go to town on."
>
> --bgz

No relation, I expect, with the perhaps now defunct slang participle "housed" = 'inebriated' which turned up in profusion in my students' new word journals a decade ago and which I was informed was pronounced to rhyme with "doused" rather than "roused".  I never did figure out what the etymology of that one was.  Too bad that now there's no longer any college slang term for '(to be) drunk' ;-)

LH
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Grant Barrett <grantbarrett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> A listener to the radio show came across “to house” meaning “to eat.”
>>
>> I see “house” v. in HDAS has “to take for oneself; steal,” which is a possible connection, but it seems a more straightforward “house” ‘to cover, shelter, or contain’ is more likely the source.
>>
>> Has anybody done any digging on it?
>>
>> Here are a few uses I came across (in poor citation form, I’m afraid).
>>
>> The tortilla strips are such a wonderful invention.  So much easier when you are at a party and don't want to house a whole chip in front of other people. Yelp 4/13/2009
>>
>> I am about to house an entire Guinness Pie at our holiday lunch at O'Connor's, one of my favorite restaurant. 12/16/2009
>>
>> About to house a whole Alfredo pizza to my self. 4/11/2010
>>
>> I am about to house a whole pizza. i got goals! 1/29/2011
>>
>> I was starving so I wanted to house a burger and fries. Yelp review, 3/18/2013
>>
>> to eat quickly, or to do
>> Man, I just housed so much Burger King.
>> Urban Dictionary, 4/17 2013
>>
>> I am going to house a burger at Smith and Wollenskys. 6/9/2013
>>
>> Grant Barrett
>> grantbarrett at gmail.com
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org