Consumption is the using up of goods, food or fuel. What gets taken in and does not come back.
Economics uses it as one of the basic measures, so household consumption and energy consumption are standard figures. Environmental writing treats the word as a problem in itself, since reducing consumption is the whole argument. Medicine has a dated sense, since consumption was the old name for tuberculosis, so called because the disease consumed the body, and Victorian novels are full of it. The verb is consume.
1nounconsumptionThe using up of resources, goods or food.
“Fuel consumption rose sharply that winter.”
2nounnameThe old name for tuberculosis.
“Two of her sisters died of consumption.”
Latin
cōnsūmptiō
Old French
consumpcion
Middle English
consumpcioun
English, today
consumption
From Middle English consumpcioun, from Old French consumpcion, from Latin cōnsūmptiō. From con- Latin sūmptus -ion, from Middle English consumpcioun, from Old French consumpcion, from Latin cōnsūmptiō, from cōnsūmō + tiō, from con- + sūmō. Equivalent to consume + -tion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA