eat someone for breakfast

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Verb

eat someone for breakfast (third-person singular simple present eats someone for breakfast, present participle eating someone for breakfast, simple past ate someone for breakfast, past participle eaten someone for breakfast)

1. (slang, figuratively) To beat easily; to trounce.

   Synonyms: eat someone's lunch; see also Thesaurus:defeat

   Worried? Nah, I eat punks like you for breakfast.

   If you slip up, they're going to eat you for breakfast.

   • 2009, Phil Edmonston, Lemon-Aid Used Cars and Trucks 2009-2010, Dundurn, →ISBN, page 115:

     A low-quality, fuel-thirsty small car that improved a bit during its last three years on the market. 1999 and earlier models eat engine head gaskets for breakfast and wallets for lunch.

   • 2023 April 5, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, spoken by Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy):

     This guy's a lunatic, a psycho. He will eat you for breakfast. He won't even notice it probably, cause you're very, very, small.

Further reading

• “to eat (also have) (a person or thing) for breakfast, phrase” under “breakfast, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, February 2024.