My husband's family uses the phrase "eating on" as in "we have been eating on these leftovers for several days." This isn't a phrase my family uses, and honestly, I find it evokes a repellant mental image for me. Out of curiosity, I asked several friends around the country (United States) if they are familiar with this phrase. So far, my mother in law and friend's mother in law from the St. Louis area both use it, as does my father in law from Tennessee. I am from central Illinois and cannot recall my family using the phrase. So I believe it may be Southern English. However, I can't recall seeing this used in print or literature by any authors with whose work I am familiar (William Faulkner, Fannie Flagg, Flannery O'connor). Is anyone familiar with the phrase "eating on" who can tell me it's origins or regional usage? Thanks!
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It implies scarcity or limitation of food, as in "we were living on pot noodles". – Weather Vane Mar 13 '21 at 15:10
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Are your husband's family native Anglophones? It looks to me like a non-native speaker's non-idiomatic version of *living on / off* or *subsisting on / getting by on / surviving on...* - but if they are in fact native speakers, it's just an uncommon dialectal usage that probably arose in some isolated community where there *were* lots on non-native speakers (so they didn't pick up the "mainstream" usage). – FumbleFingers Mar 13 '21 at 15:20
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4In the UK we used to say 'dining on' more than we do now, e.g. I roasted a 5 kg joint of beef and dined on it for three days. – Michael Harvey Mar 13 '21 at 15:23
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@MichaelHarvey: Or sometimes we might *pick at* the Xmas turkey for several days with much the same meaning! – FumbleFingers Mar 13 '21 at 15:25
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@WeatherVane I'm sure you are right. But the phrase does not seem to enter into recorded speech, so far as my limited researches go: just hearsay. 'to live on' is a reasonable precedent. – Tuffy Mar 13 '21 at 15:25
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I almost thought I'd found a written instance talking about people who ate on thin gruel. But it was an accidental collocation, not relevant to the usage here. – FumbleFingers Mar 13 '21 at 15:31
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Yes "pick at" sounds very similar in it's meaning! It implies eating portions of a large volume of food over an extended period. And yes, to answer FumbleFingers question: all native English speakers. Some are from Southern Illinois (St. Louis area) while others are from near Memphis Tennessee. I just can't tell if it's from a small region (these two cities) or a larger one (all of the South), or when it came into common usage in these places. – Caitlin J. Ramsey Mar 13 '21 at 16:00
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But do you know any other people from either of those areas? They might not be at all typical, even in terms of how people spoke years ago. We seem to have established that the usage has never had much currency, but it might even be that it came from a small number of speakers in only one of the areas you mention - perhaps the people from the other area started imitating it when they heard it from people in the first "linguistic pocket" simply because as an oddball dialectal usage it seemed "suitable" for them too (they all being linguistically "out of their element", so to speak). – FumbleFingers Mar 13 '21 at 16:09
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2Survive on, live on, dine on, feast on, subsist on, chow down on, etc etc. – Michael Harvey Mar 13 '21 at 16:25
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1@MichaelHarvey: That's at least 6 good reasons why someone in an isolated linguistic community might "extrapolate" the usage *eat on*, and there's apparently no evidence at all that the "eat" version ever had any significant currency in any broader area, so I think this question is going nowhere. – FumbleFingers Mar 13 '21 at 16:30
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Another relative, by marriage, who was raised in a rural area near Jackson, Tennessee, says her family would say this in reference to either leftover turkey or ham, usually in a large quantity, in he refrigerator. So it can't be a very isolated or small pocket. The other native English speaker from St. Louis (who has never met the others) says it is commonly used in her family. – Caitlin J. Ramsey Mar 13 '21 at 16:56
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Oh I just found this: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/410830/regional-dialect-or-just-improper-grammar-eating-on-leftovers-or-just-eating-le – Caitlin J. Ramsey Mar 13 '21 at 19:19
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Why is this eating on you? – Hot Licks Mar 13 '21 at 22:40
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There’s also “snack on.” – Xanne Mar 14 '21 at 01:29
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I wonder if it's related to chow down on – BoldBen Mar 14 '21 at 14:02
1 Answers
I found this answer on a related post, which seems accurate and makes sense to me:
As a native speaker of a 'deep south' dialect, I believe I can provide a fairly authoritative answer.
Eat is inherently telic—unmodified it implicates (although it does not entail) complete consumption of its object. Consequently, a futurive construction such as I will eat or I'm going to eat is implicitly perfective.
On is added in my dialect to explicitly cancel those implications: the speaker claims that he will eat portions of the spaghetti at intervals throughout the coming week, without necessarily consuming the whole of it.
(However, "I'm going to eat ...", falls oddly on my ear; it suggests (again, in my dialect) that the speaker is announcing his firm intention of dining on the spaghetti. A more likely construction would be "I'm going to be eating on the leftover spaghetti all week.")
Eating on is not by any means a fixed idiom in my dialect. What we have here is, rather, a regionally widespread use of Verb on Object instead of bare Verb Object to provide an explicitly imperfective sense: for instance, we sand on a board for a while or consider on a topic without coming to any conclusion. This use of on is by no means unknown in Standard English (whatever the hell that is), where one may nibble on the hors-d'oeuvres or work on an assigned task; but the use is more widespread and the construction more productive in the South.
Originally posted by StonyB
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A good find that sets out the reasons for, and consistency of, a usage. Not only does it deal with eat on but it sheds interesting light on dine on. – Anton Mar 14 '21 at 22:53