eat someone out of house and home, to

Fig. to eat everything that someone has in the house. That huge dog is eating us out of house and home. The entire football team came over and ate poor Sally out of house and home.

Eat so much as to deplete someone's resources, as in The kids are eating her out of house and home. This hyperbole was well known by the time Shakespeare used it (2 Henry IV, 2:1): "He hath eaten me out of house and home."

If someone eats you out of house and home, they eat so much food that it costs you a lot of money to feed them. My children are eating me out of house and home! They eat everybody out of house and home but nobody minds because they provide such first-rate entertainment. Note: This expression was used in Shakespeare's play `Henry IV Part II', act 2 scene 1 (1597). When asked why she wants her lodger Sir John Falstaff arrested, the landlady Mistress Quickly replies: `He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his.'

To consume a great deal. This expression is at least two thousand years old. It appeared in the Alexandrian philosopher Philo’s De Agricultura (ca. a.d. 40) as well as in numerous English writings, before Shakespeare used it for Mistress Quickly’s description of the gluttonous Falstaff: “He hath eaten me out of house and home” (Henry IV, Part 2, 2.1).