Consumption Meaning: Definition and Examples
Consumption is a word with two lives. In modern English it is an everyday economics word: the using up of energy, food, and goods — fuel consumption, food consumption, consumer spending. In older books it is something else entirely: a dreaded disease that wasted the body away, the illness we now call tuberculosis. Both meanings come from the same idea, the Latin verb consumere, to take up altogether, to use up completely. The disease was named for what it seemed to do to the body; the modern sense names what we do to the world’s resources.
Most people meet the word in one of those two lives and are surprised by the other. A reader of a nineteenth-century novel meets a heroine “dying of consumption” and needs to know it means tuberculosis. A reader of an economics report meets “household consumption rose by two per cent” and needs to know it means spending. This article covers both senses and keeps them clearly apart.
What Does “Consumption” Mean? The Dictionary Definitions
| Dictionary | Definition of consumption |
|---|---|
| Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries | Noun /kənˈsʌmpʃn/, [uncountable]. (1) “the act of using energy, food or materials; the amount used.” (2) “the act of buying and using products.” (3, old-fashioned) “a serious disease of the lungs,” synonym tuberculosis. |
| Cambridge Dictionary | Noun [U], UK /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, US /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/: “the amount used or eaten”; “the act of using, eating, or drinking something.” |
| Collins English Dictionary | Noun [uncountable]: the act of consuming, or the amount consumed — used of food, energy, goods, and resources. Collins also records the historical sense: consumption as an old name for tuberculosis. |
Two things stand out. First, the modern senses all describe the same action from different angles: using, eating, buying. Second, every dictionary marks the disease sense as old-fashioned or historical. That label matters: nobody today is diagnosed with consumption. If you use the word that way, you are writing about the past.
The Modern Sense: Using Things Up
The ordinary modern meaning of consumption is the act of using something, or the amount used. It applies to almost anything that can be used up:
- Energy and fuel: “Energy consumption rises sharply in cold weather.” “This car has low fuel consumption.” Here the word measures how much is burned or drawn on.
- Food and drink: “The doctor advised him to reduce his alcohol consumption.” “The meat was declared unfit for human consumption.” Here it means eating and drinking — the taking of something into the body.
- Goods and spending: “Household consumption accounts for most of the economy.” “Consumption rather than saving has become the central feature of contemporary societies.” Here it means buying and using products — the economist’s sense.
The word is built on the verb consume, and the two work as a pair: consume is the action, consumption is the noun for the action or its amount. For the verb in full — its forms, its senses, and its own history — see our article on consume.
Notice how often consumption appears with a word in front of it. The commonest pairings are energy consumption, fuel consumption, electricity consumption, food consumption, alcohol consumption, and mass consumption. These are the same construction repeated — a thing, plus the word for using it up. If you can say “the consumption of fuel,” you can say “fuel consumption,” and the shorter form is the one native speakers reach for.
Useful phrases with “consumption”
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| fit / unfit for human consumption | Safe (or unsafe) to eat or drink. A legal and food-safety phrase: “The water was declared unfit for human consumption.” |
| for public consumption | Intended to be seen or heard by the public. “Her speech was not intended for public consumption.” Often used of statements prepared for the press. |
| for domestic consumption | For use inside the country where something is produced, rather than for export. “The grain is grown for domestic consumption.” |
| conspicuous consumption | Buying expensive things in order to display wealth. A term from economics and sociology, coined by Thorstein Veblen in 1899. |
| mass consumption | Buying and using goods on a large scale by the general public — the pattern of a consumer society. |
The Historical Sense: Consumption as Tuberculosis
Until the early twentieth century, consumption was the common name for the disease we now call tuberculosis (TB). The name was descriptive. Tuberculosis wastes the body: patients lose weight steadily, grow pale, and cough blood. To people who watched it happen, the disease appeared to be consuming the patient from the inside — eating them away. The American Cyclopædia of 1879 put it plainly: the name “derives its significance from the consuming effects as regards the lungs, and the wasting of the whole body.”
The disease had other names too. Doctors called it phthisis, from a Greek word meaning “to waste away.” In ordinary speech it was also called the decline and the white plague, for the pallor of its victims. But consumption was the name most people used, and it is the one that fills nineteenth-century novels: the consumptive heroine, the brother sent to a sanatorium, the family that loses a child to “a decline.”
The name began to disappear once the cause was understood. In 1882, the German physician Robert Koch isolated the bacterium that causes the disease, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The term tuberculosis had been coined earlier, in 1834, by Johann Schönlein, but it only replaced consumption in ordinary use during the twentieth century. Today the disease sense survives in historical writing, classic literature, and the phrase “died of consumption” on old death certificates and gravestones.
One caution: the historical sense is not a synonym you can swap into a modern sentence. “He died of consumption” is correct only about the past. In a modern medical context, the correct term is tuberculosis or TB.
How to Pronounce “Consumption”: UK and US
- UK: /kənˈsʌmpʃn/ — kun-SUMP-shun
- US: /kənˈsʌmpʃn/ — kun-SUMP-shun
The pronunciation is the same in British and American English: four syllables, with the stress on the second — kun-SUMP-shun. The first syllable is a weak kun, the second carries the stress and rhymes with bump, and the ending is a quick -shun, the same sound that ends action and nation. Do not stress the first syllable (“CON-sumption”) and do not give the word five syllables by sounding out the p and the t separately — -ption is one quick syllable, -shun.
Grammar: Countable or Uncountable?
Consumption is an uncountable noun in its modern senses. You do not say “a consumption” or “three consumptions” when you mean using things up; you say “a high level of consumption” or “increased consumption.” The word names an amount or an activity, not a countable thing.
The one exception is historical. In nineteenth-century medical writing, consumptions in the plural could mean cases of the disease: “the total number of deaths reported from consumption was 102,199” in the United States census of 1890, for example. That plural belongs to the past. In modern English, treat the word as uncountable, and use a phrase like “consumption levels” when you need a plural idea.
The word family is worth knowing as a set: the verb consume (to use up, to eat), the noun consumption (the act or amount), the noun consumer (a person who buys and uses goods), the adjective consumable (able to be used up), and the noun consumerism (the culture of buying). The commonest error is reaching for the wrong member — saying “consumer” where the sentence needs “consumption.”
Where “Consumption” Comes From
The word entered English in late Middle English, from Latin consumptio, from the verb consumere — con- (“altogether”) plus sumere (“to take up”). The Latin sense was “a taking up altogether, a using up completely,” and English has kept that sense for six centuries. The disease sense grew out of it naturally: a disease that “takes up” the body entirely, wasting it away, was a consumption in the most literal sense of the word.
That shared root is why the two senses feel connected even though they describe different things. Both are about something being used up until nothing is left — fuel in a tank, food on a plate, or, in the old medical sense, the strength of a human body.
How to Use “Consumption” in a Sentence
- “Fuel consumption has fallen as cars have become more efficient.”
- “She was advised to cut down her sugar consumption.”
- “Household consumption rose by two per cent last quarter.”
- “The novel’s heroine dies of consumption, as so many characters did in nineteenth-century fiction.”
- “This water is not fit for human consumption.”
- “The report was written for public consumption, not for specialists.”
Common Mistakes
Using the disease sense in a modern context. Consumption as a disease is historical. If you mean tuberculosis today, say tuberculosis. Reserve consumption for historical writing and literature.
Treating it as countable. “A consumption of fuel” is awkward; the natural phrasing is “fuel consumption” or “the consumption of fuel.” Do not write “consumptions” in modern English.
Confusing “consumption” with “consumer.” Consumption is the act of using; a consumer is the person doing it. “Consumer spending rose” is correct; “consumption spending rose” mixes the two up.
Stressing the wrong syllable. The stress is on the second syllable: kun-SUMP-shun. Stressing the first syllable is the most audible mistake a learner can make with this word.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the meaning of consumption?
In modern English, consumption is the act of using something up — eating food, burning fuel, or buying and using goods — or the amount used. Historically, it was also the old name for tuberculosis.
Is consumption the same as tuberculosis?
Not any more. Consumption was the common name for tuberculosis until the early twentieth century, because the disease seemed to consume, or waste away, the body. Today tuberculosis (TB) is the correct medical term; consumption in that sense is historical.
Why was tuberculosis called consumption?
Because of its visible effects: patients lost weight steadily and grew pale and weak, as though the disease were eating them away from the inside. The name comes from Latin consumere, to use up completely.
Is “consumption” countable or uncountable?
Uncountable in modern English. You say “a high level of consumption,” not “a consumption” or “three consumptions.” The plural consumptions appears only in historical medical writing, meaning cases of the disease.
What does “fit for human consumption” mean?
Safe to eat or drink. It is a legal and food-safety phrase: food or water declared “unfit for human consumption” must not be eaten or drunk.
What is the difference between consumption and consumerism?
Consumption is the act of using goods; consumerism is the culture, economics, or ideology built around buying — the belief that buying more is good, or the social pattern of mass buying.
The Short Version
Consumption means using something up: food eaten, fuel burned, goods bought and used. It is uncountable, stressed on the second syllable (kun-SUMP-shun), and it belongs to the family of consume. Remember its second life too: for centuries it was the name of tuberculosis, the disease that seemed to consume the body — a meaning that survives in old novels and old gravestones, and nowhere else in modern English.
