to fill or swell something to the point of fullness, especially with blood, liquid, or food.
From the prefix en- plus gorge, from Old French gorge (throat or gullet). The word originally referred to filling the throat but came to mean filling any structure to capacity, particularly used in medical contexts for blood vessels filling with blood.
This medical term is crucial in understanding how tick bites work—when a tick engorges itself with blood, it can increase its weight by 200 times, and that's how it transmits diseases, so understanding this one word helps explain vector-borne illness.
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