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Looking for a reference.
Apparently 'hou' (pronunciation roughly similar to '候') means eat in Sichuanese, at least in some dialects.
For instance:
hou饭
出去hou
hou东西
hou𩛲𩛲(𬲹𬲹)
hou酒
I've gone through about nine different dictionaries to just find a simple reference for this word, but with no luck.
A wild guess is it would be this character: 餱 but I have no way to prove that.
I don't have a reference handy. But as other commenters have stated, it's probably a regional form the word that means "to drink" in Mandarin and is written 喝. Words for "to eat" and "to drink" tend to cross over a certain amount between those exact senses.
As for the sound that reminds you of hou, the open final -e in Mandarin is a rather rare sound in Chinese — it's a diphthong whose phonetics are roughly [ɯɘ] or [ɯə] in Standard Mandarin — and regional equivalents are typically forms of [o].
This meaning "to consume [food]" is a fairly recent association for the character 喝 — with the modern pronunciation hè, it's attested in the meanings "to frighten" and "to berate", and is seen in those meanings in old texts. There's another reading yè for meanings connected with choking or sounds of choking, but these uses are only found in pre-modern writing.
Though neither the word nor the character is likely to be related to hè 嚇 'to frighten" or hē 訶 "to berate".
We still use 喝 in the pronunciation hè to mean "to cry out", as in yāohe 吆喝 "to shout one's wares (said of peddlers)" and hècǎi 喝彩 "to cheer (as at a sports event)". The character is attested in this sense by the Sòng.
I'm a Sichuanese. I guess it's the word '喝' and the pronunciation is more like 'ho' which means "to drink".
According to http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_502f95d6010171cq.html
吃饭是总称。“喝饭”是吃饭过程中某一具体动作。把米放进锅里煮成的叫做饭，再用勺子盛进碗里，端起来同喝水相似，故曰“喝”（我们这里都这样说）。说“吃”也可，反正都是送进嘴里。喝粥可以，喝饭就不行了？您说呢老大姐？再细分的话，一顿饭就有两种说法，一般食用固态食物时说“吃”，如吃馒头，吃菜等。食用液态食物时说“喝”，如喝粥，喝饭，喝汤等。
他们当地俗语就是把“吃饭“说成是“喝饭”，看来我是孤陋寡闻了。这让我想起四川方言中的一种说法，四川方言将“抽烟”说成吃烟，将“喝水”说成“吃水”，川人还说 吃茶，吃酒，吃汤，吃奶，看来四川人把所有进嘴的东西都叫吃，不管是液体固体还是气体，倒也省事。不仅四川话将喝水说成吃水，南方有些省份也将喝水说成“吃水”，如江西瑞金沙洲坝的红井旁就立有“吃水不忘挖井人”的碑，当然碑上的“吃水”应该是“用水”之意，大于高于一般的“吃水”,上海人也说吃烟吃水的，仔细想来，烟和水怎么能吃？“吃”这个动词有一个食物在嘴中的咀嚼过程，而喝却是直接进喉咙，吃烟？把烟放在嘴里咀嚼，那不成了异食癖吗？吃水？水是液体，进入嘴里它也不会让你有咀嚼的机会呀！所以烟只能是抽或者吸，水只能喝不能说吃，喝饭也好，吃烟吃水也罢，都得服从语法，从语法角度看，它们都是有语病的，即动宾搭配不当，在这一点上，普通话最为准确，写文章当以普通话为准，除非文章的特殊需要。
