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Merriam's dictionary defines "eat" as an intransitive verb and provides the following definition followed by an example: "to bear the expense of : take a loss on" the team was forced to eat the rest of his contract.

Isn't "to eat the rest of his contract" the object of the verb phrase "was forced"? Therefore, wouldn't this be a poor example of "eat" as an intransitive verb since it's functioning as a noun and not a verb at all?

Or is it possible that the entirety of "was forced to eat" is a verb phrase and that "the rest of his contract" is the object of the verb?

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    Frankly, it looks like an example of eat as a transitive verb. Intransitive: No, I will not eat.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jul 10, 2022 at 2:10
  • This is why you shouldn't try to get grammatical information from dictionaries. Eat is prototypically transitive. One never eats without eating something. The object is so obvious that it is often omitted if indefinite -- What time did you eat? is a normal question, and so is I haven't eaten for 8 hours. But both seemingly intransitive uses actually have objects -- one can use anything, for instance, but it adds no information.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jul 10, 2022 at 2:11

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First: You seem to have a typo in your question. Merriam-Webster lists "eat" as a transitive verb for the example you are referring to (not an intransitive verb, as you wrote).

So, to be clear, in the sentence, "The team was forced to eat the rest of his contract," the verb "eat" is a transitive verb.

Let's analyze this sentence further:

The team was forced to eat the rest of his contract.

  • This sentence is in the passive voice.
  • It may be easier to analyze it if we first convert it to the active voice.
  • The sentence does not specify the agent of the action being described. In passive voice sentences, IF the agent (the entity that is doing/performing the action) is mentioned, it is typically indicated by the preposition "by." However, the agent is often left unspecified in the passive voice. For the sentence we're analyzing, I will refer to the agent as "someone/something."

PASSIVE VOICE: The team was forced to eat the rest of his contract [by someone/something].

Converted to ACTIVE VOICE: "[Someone/Something] forced the team to eat the rest of his contract."

In the active voice version, the infinitive "to eat" is functioning as the verb complement of "the team." In turn, "the team" is the direct object of the transitive verb "forced." Thus, in this example, the verb phrase "to eat the rest of his contract" is the verb complement of the direct object of the transitive verb "forced." "To eat" is a transitive verb itself, and its direct object is the noun phrase "the rest of his contract."

Now let's convert this back to the passive voice. When comparing an active voice sentence and its equivalent passive voice version, the direct object of the verb in the active voice is the same entity as the grammatical subject of the verb in the passive voice. This role is sometimes referred to as the "patient," which is the entity that is the recipient/target of the action performed by the "agent" in both the active and passive voice. So, the patient in our example sentence is "the team," which, in terms of grammatical structure, functions as the (1) direct object of the active voice version and as the (2) subject of the verb in the passive voice version.

Thus, in the original passive voice sentence, "The team was forced to eat the rest of his contract," we have the following grammatical structure/roles:

THE TEAM

  • Grammatical subject of the passive voice verb "was forced"
  • Patient (recipient/target of the action)

WAS FORCED

  • Simple past tense of the verb "to force" in the passive voice conjugated to agree with a third-person singular subject ("the team").
  • The standard passive voice form of a verb is formed using the formula: Passive Voice of Verb "X" = [auxiliary verb "to be"] + [past participle of verb "X"]
  • Note that the auxiliary verb "to be" must be conjugated to agree with its grammatical subject, which is the same entity as the patient (in the "agent/patient" paradigm.) In this example, the correct form of the auxiliary "to be" is therefore "was," in order to agree with the grammatical subject "the team."

TO EAT THE REST OF HIS CONTRACT

  • This is a verb phrase that is headed by the transitive verb "to eat." It is the verb complement of the past participle "forced," which is part of the passive voice construction "was forced" as explained above. In this respect, the verb phrase (infinitive phrase) "to eat the rest of his contract" can be considered the direct object of the past participle, "forced." However, technically, the full passive voice verb construction, "was forced," does not have a direct object.
  • Within this verb phrase, the direct object of "to eat" is the noun phrase "the rest of his contract."
  • Within this noun phrase, we have the following functions:
  • "the" is a determiner modifying the head of the noun phrase, "rest."
  • "of his contract" is a prepositional phrase that is also modifying the head of the noun phrase, "rest."
  • Within the prepositional phrase, "of" is a preposition that is the head of the phrase. The object of the preposition "of" is the noun phrase "his contract," which is composed of the determiner "his" modifying the noun "contract" (which is the head of the noun phrase).
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You seem to be confusing two issues: the complement of "forced" and the complement of "to eat".

  1. The infinitive phrase "to eat . . ." functions as the complement of "forced". This kind of verb complement is usually not considered a direct object.

  2. "The rest of his contract" functions as the complement of "to eat". This kind of complement is a direct object, so "to eat" is transitive. (By the way, M-W online gives both transitive and intransitive entries for "eat".)

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