hunger
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
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to feel hunger; be hungry.
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to have a strong desire.
verb (used with object)
idioms
noun
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a feeling of pain, emptiness, or weakness induced by lack of food
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an appetite, desire, need, or craving
hunger for a woman
verb
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to have or cause to have a need or craving for food
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(intr; usually foll by for or after) to have a great appetite or desire (for)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hungersimple
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hungerssimple
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have hungeredperfect
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has hungeredperfect
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am hungeringprogressive
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are hungeringprogressive
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is hungeringprogressive
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have been hungeringperfect progressive
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has been hungeringperfect progressive
Past
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hungeredsimple
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had hungeredperfect
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was hungeringprogressive
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were hungeringprogressive
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had been hungeringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hunger
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English hungor; cognate with German Hunger
Explanation
Hunger is the sensation of needing — or wanting — to eat something. People use the same word to describe a hankering for a snack or for the more dire meaning of starvation, as in "world hunger." Hunger sometimes refers to an extreme lack of food, the equivalent to starvation: "We need to do something about hunger in poor communities." It can also simply mean your afternoon craving: "My daily hunger for chocolate was distracting me from my work." You can also hunger for things, both food (like when you hunger for French fries) and non-food things (like when you hunger for attention).
Vocabulary lists containing hunger
Nutrition - Introductory
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Nutrition - Middle School
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Nutrition - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Those demonstrations also featured a veteran activist on a hunger strike.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
GLP-1 helps regulate hunger and blood sugar, and semaglutide works by copying its effects in the body.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 24, 2026
Prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk, who ended a 26-day hunger strike in support of the movement late Thursday, said the government had assured him that no action would be taken against peaceful demonstrators.
From Barron's ● Jul. 24, 2026
Plus, I was famished with the kind of hunger that accompanies the dissipating stress after leaving the dentist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
“Use them to trade this winter when the hunger sets in.”
From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone
Huge questions for a party that used to dominate Scottish politics and hungers for a way back to power at Holyrood.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
No one hungers for the bad old days—the infamous “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headline ran just months before PS1 opened—but it’s hard not to be nostalgic for the art world of the past.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
The authors have also known hungers of many kinds, inheriting their ancestors’ “insatiable” appetites — for food and water, but also for connection.
From New York Times ● May 17, 2023
“Yet, our nation hungers for their radical song. Let us not sit back silently...”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2023
They were not supposed to try and sate their hungers with demons and the dead.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
Malcom McLean, a New Jersey commercial shipper who championed the new idea of prepacking cargo into big metal boxes, hungered for a Pentagon contract.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026
Election administrators in many states have long hungered for better access to federal information on citizenship status.
From Salon ● Feb. 27, 2026
That added to a quasi “gold rush” among investors who understandably hungered for a piece of the action.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 3, 2026
Tom was of course not a nincompoop, but a serious, thoughtful person who hungered to add substance to sketch comedy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2023
For he hungered to learn, to gain power.
From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin
Her own audience, primed to look for conspiracy theories in the wake of a high-profile murder, had been hungering for Owens to challenge the widely accepted version of events.
From Slate ● Feb. 27, 2026
It has also served as a watershed moment for the business-news landscape, making a group of internet influencers go-to sources for people hungering for news of FTX and SBF, as Bankman-Fried is known.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 5, 2023
“Our audiences are hungering for an authentic experience, the work of art placed in front of them,” Mr. Steward said.
From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2022
But after whetting my appetite, “Trayf” left me hungering for more substantive spiritual nourishment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2022
That’s what comes of hungering for something: You forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down.
From "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
