ate up

Ate up is the past tense of eat up, meaning consumed completely: The kids ate up all the cookies.

Figuratively, to be eaten up by something is to be consumed or preoccupied by it: She was ate up with guilt.

In informal American speech, especially Southern and military slang, ate up describes someone who is excessively enthusiastic, obsessed, or mentally scattered: He's ate up with the dumb-ass.

To say someone ate that up means they received something eagerly or believed it uncritically: I told him the story and he ate it up.