hungry

—hungrily, adv. —hungriness, n.

/hung"gree/, adj. hungrier, hungriest.

1. having a desire, craving, or need for food; feeling hunger.

2. indicating, characteristic of, or characterized by hunger: He approached the table with a hungry look.

3. strongly or eagerly desirous.

4. lacking needful or desirable elements; not fertile; poor: hungry land.

5. marked by a scarcity of food: The depression years were hungry times.

6. Informal. aggressively ambitious or competitive, as from a need to overcome poverty or past defeats: a hungry investment firm looking for wealthy clients.

[bef. 950; ME, OE hungrig. See HUNGER, -Y¹]

Syn. 1. ravenous, famishing, starving. HUNGRY, FAMISHED, STARVED describe a condition resulting from a lack of food. HUNGRY is a general word, expressing various degrees of eagerness or craving for food: hungry between meals; desperately hungry after a long fast; hungry as a bear. FAMISHED denotes the condition of one reduced to actual suffering from want of food, but sometimes is used lightly or in an exaggerated statement: famished after being lost in a wilderness; simply famished (hungry).

STARVED denotes a condition resulting from long-continued lack or insufficiency of food, and implies enfeeblement, emaciation, or death (originally death from any cause, but now death from lack of food): He looks thin and starved. By the end of the terrible winter, thousands had starved (to death). It is also used as a humorous exaggeration: I only had two sandwiches, pie, and some milk, so I'm simply starved (hungry).

Ant. 1. sated, satiated, surfeited.

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