consumption
/kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/ noun B1- The act of eating, drinking or using. · The consumption of snails as food is more common in France than in England.
- The amount consumed. · gross national consumption
- The act of consuming or destroying. · The fire's consumption of the forest caused ecological changes.
- The wasting away of the human body through disease.
- Pulmonary tuberculosis and other diseases that cause wasting away, lung infection, etc.
- Alcoholism as it precipitates a person's death (especially of natural causes).
Plural consumptions
From the library
That would be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see.
She read Anne’s death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed.
It appeared that within a very few minutes of our leaving, an English lady had arrived who was in the last stage of consumption.
It was consumption of the most virulent kind.
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