Pac-Man

• Pac Man

From the popular arcade game Pac-Man (1980) and its player character, a circle with a snapping mouth gobbling dots in a maze. The original Japanese title of Puck Man (パックマン) was derived from the Japanese phrase “Paku paku taberu” which refers to gobbling something up and マン (man), from English man; the title was changed for the North American release to mitigate vandalism.

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Pac-Man (plural Pac-Men)

1. (slang) Anything that consumes indiscriminately.
   • 1992, Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey M Berry, Jerry Goldman, The challenge of democracy: government in America:

     "Medicaid is becoming the Pac-Man of state government, eating up every dollar," remarked one official.

   • 1995, Bruce Piasecki, Corporate environmental strategy: the avalanche of change since Bhopal:

     Chlorine acts like a Pac-Man of the high atmosphere, gobbling one ozone molecule after another and then being regenerated to gobble again.

   • 1995, J Richard Middleton, Brian J Walsh, Truth is stranger than it used to be: biblical faith in a postmodern age:

     The ironic deconstruction of all meaningful discourse, including normative discourse, says Gergen, "is like a Pac-Man of social pattern, gobbling all that stands in its path."

   • 1995, Patrick J Spain, James R Talbot, Hoover's Handbook of American Companies 1996:

     Like the Pac-Man of garbage, Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI) is gobbling up smaller waste disposal firms — 113 in 1994 alone — as that industry becomes increasingly consolidated.