hungry

[ huhng-gree ]
See synonyms for: hungryhungrilyhungriness on Thesaurus.com

adjective,hun·gri·er, hun·gri·est.
  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.

  1. strongly or eagerly desirous.

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

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

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

Origin of hungry

1
First recorded before 950; Middle English, Old English hungrig. See hunger, -y1

synonym study For hungry

1. 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 ).

Other words for hungry

Opposites for hungry

Other words from hungry

  • hun·gri·ly, adverb
  • hun·gri·ness, noun

Words Nearby hungry

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use hungry in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for hungry

hungry

/ (ˈhʌŋɡrɪ) /


adjective-grier or -griest
  1. desiring food

  2. experiencing pain, weakness, or nausea through lack of food

  1. (postpositive foll by for) having a craving, desire, or need (for)

  2. expressing or appearing to express greed, craving, or desire

  3. lacking fertility; poor

  4. Australian and NZ informal

    • greedy; grasping

    • stingy; mean

  5. NZ (of timber) dry and bare

Derived forms of hungry

  • hungrily or hungeringly, adverb
  • hungriness, noun

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012