to house = to eat

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Unlikely to be related to the usage under discussion, but Ben's comments reminded me of the use of transitive 'house' in football commentary to describe a (long) touchdown run/pass (e.g. he housed it) where I guess it's abbreviated from "take it to the house." This is, I think, normally pronounced with [s] like the noun.

Matt Gordon
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Ben Zimmer [bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 8:51 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: to house = to eat

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

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