No. 803 in Japanese
食い
"食い" (kui) means "eating" or "consumption."
In a sentence
私は朝食を急いで食い終わりました。
I quickly finished eating breakfast.
Here, '食い' refers to the act of eating and is used in a compound verb structure with '終わる' to mean 'to finish eating'.
彼はギターを弾くことに夢中で、昼食を食いそびれた。
He was so engrossed in playing the guitar that he missed having lunch.
In this context, '食い' is part of the verb '食いそびれる,' which means 'to miss eating'.
その物語は本当に興味深くて、全部食い入るように読んだ。
The story was so fascinating that I read all of it keenly.
'食い' appears in the phrase '食い入るように,' which means 'intently' or 'keenly,' metaphorically derived from 'to bite into.'
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “食い” in actual Japanese podcasts.
Find “食い” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Japanese podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into 日本語, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Japanese books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).