Ingest Means to Take Into Body or System | Generated by AI
Question: What does “ingest” mean?
Answer:
Ingest means to take something into the body (especially food, drink, or substances) or more broadly to take in / absorb / bring something into a system.
Here are the main meanings with examples:
- Biological / Medical meaning (most common everyday usage)
→ to eat, drink, swallow, or take into the body
Examples:- “Do not ingest this product — it is for external use only.”
- “The child accidentally ingested a small toy piece.”
- “Some animals ingest large amounts of soil while feeding.”
- Data / Technology / Computing meaning (very common in software, AI, big data)
→ to collect, import, bring in, or load data into a system for processing or storage
Examples:- “The pipeline ingests millions of log events per second.”
- “We need to ingest data from multiple APIs and databases.”
- “Kafka is often used for real-time data ingestion.”
- General / figurative meaning
→ to absorb, take in, or incorporate (ideas, information, etc.)
Examples:- “She ingests a huge amount of technical information every day.”
- “The platform ingests content from thousands of creators.”
Quick summary of most frequent modern usages:
| Context | Meaning | Typical subjects |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine / Poison control | swallow / eat / drink | pills, poison, food |
| Data engineering / AI | import / collect / load | logs, events, files, streams |
| Everyday English | take into the body | food, medication, liquid |
So depending on the context, “ingest” can mean either literally “eat/swallow” or technically “bring data into a system”. Both are correct — context decides which one is intended.