all-consuming

adjective

That consumes everything; that uses everything up.

“Google is the all-consuming superpower on the Internet; soon everything will be owned by them.”

Meanings

adjectiveall-consuming (not comparable)
  1. not comparableThat consumes everything; that uses everything up.

    Google is the all-consuming superpower on the Internet; soon everything will be owned by them.

    2 more examples

    A myth common to several cultures in the galaxy, Reapers were once imagined as space monsters that consumed entire stars. Archaeologists who searched for the sources of such myths found little besides the themes of all-consuming devils that are common to primitive cultures.

    2012, BioWare, Mass Effect 3 (science fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: The Reapers Codex entry

    It seems that they existed in some sort of previous incarnation of our universe, and use abstract terms to describe their existence, such as "feeding on concepts". They prepared for some sort of ascension, but then the Pattern came, which they describe at first as an all-consuming emptiness, elaborating by saying that anything that passed into it was torn asunder, subjected to a set of principles and order that grinds things down to nothing, in a process of which entropy is just one part.

    2019 January 7, “Exploring the SCP Foundation: Pattern Screamers” (6:12 from the start), in The Exploring Series, archived from the original on 11 Jan 2023
  2. not comparableTotally engrossing, using up all of one's time and energy.

    Brown revealed that his time as London Transport Commissioner has been all-consuming, describing it as "full-on".

    2020 July 15, Paul Clifton, “Brown "hours from stopping the Underground and buses"”, in Rail, page 7
    1 more example

    Where the Joker preys on our fears of random, irrational acts of terror, Bane has an all-consuming, dictatorial agenda that’s more stable and permanent, a New World Order that's been planned out with the precision of a military coup.

    2012 July 18, Scott Tobias, “The Dark Knight Rises”, in AV Club

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₂el-der.?
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₂elnós
  3. Proto-Germanic*allaz
  4. Proto-Germanic*ala-
  5. Proto-West Germanic*ala-
  6. Old Englishæl-
  7. Middle Englishall-
  8. Englishall-
  9. Englishconsuming
  10. Englishall-consuming

From all- + consuming.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

all-consuming. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/all-consuming

MLA

“all-consuming.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/all-consuming. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “all-consuming,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/all-consuming.

Source: all-consuming on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.