hungry

[huhng-gree]

adjective

hungrier, hungriest 

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

   Synonyms: ravenous
   Antonyms: satiated

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.

hungry

/ ˈhʌŋɡrɪ /

adjective

1. desiring food

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

3. having a craving, desire, or need (for)

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

5. lacking fertility; poor

6. informal

   1. greedy; grasping

   2. stingy; mean

7. (of timber) dry and bare

Other Word Forms

• hungrily adverb
• hungriness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of hungry¹

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

Synonym Study

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 ).

Example Sentences

Before Wolf started recording with Martin, he remembers him saying, “I want to bring in Shellback, because I think we need somebody who’s younger, who’s hungry, to give it that energy and perspective.”

Read more on Wall Street Journal

He writes of how, “like hungry street cats,” they coax from their captors “a wedge of clementine, a single popcorn.”

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His ideal employee for a sales role at the startup is a “PhD,” Kausas said—poor, hungry and desperate.

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The staffing shortage meant her wait ended up being much longer—and hungrier.

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And there was a simple daily meal because: "It's not easy to teach hungry kids."

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• eager 
• greedy 
• keen 
• ravenous 
• starved www.thesaurus.com