Definition of "devour"

Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.

2017 , Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Press, page 571

If ye refuse […] ye shall be devoured with the sword.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Isaiah 1:20

Blast after blast, fiery outbreak after fiery outbreak, like a flaming barrage from within, […] most of Edison's grounds soon became an inferno. As though on an incendiary rampage, the fires systematically devoured the contents of Edison's headquarters and facilities.

2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion

Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915