appetite
Americannoun
-
appetites
plural
-
a desire for food or drink.
I have no appetite for lunch today.
- Antonyms:
- satiety
-
a desire to satisfy any bodily need or craving.
- Synonyms:
- wish, inclination, hunger, longing
- Antonyms:
- satiety
-
a desire or liking for something; fondness; taste.
an appetite for power; an appetite for pleasure.
- Antonyms:
- satiety
noun
-
a desire for food or drink
-
a desire to satisfy a bodily craving, as for sexual pleasure
-
(usually foll by for) a desire, liking, or willingness
a great appetite for work
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of appetite
1275–1325; Middle English appetit (< Anglo-French ) < Latin appetītus natural desire, equivalent to appetī- (variant stem of appetere; see appetence) + -tus suffix of v. action
Explanation
If you've filled your plate three times, you must have a strong appetite. I hope you still have room for dessert. The Latin word appetitus, meaning "desire for," is the root for appetite. If you have worked up an appetite, you have a desire for food. If you've lost your appetite, you're not hungry at all (maybe because something upset you). You can have an appetite for things other than food. Perhaps you have an appetite for power, or funny movies, or for little silver shoes with buttons on them.
Vocabulary lists containing appetite
Eat Your Words
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Nutrition - Introductory
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Because of Winn-Dixie
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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:
He’s 17 with an appetite like a dog.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2026
But the suspicion is that they are not being bought for avid overseas readers but instead something else with a voracious appetite for new information: AI.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Right now, there’s little appetite for many of the plans that policymakers and others have proposed to fix the shortfall.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 14, 2026
To explore how the protein influences appetite and body weight, the animals were given free access to soybean oil as a source of dietary fat.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026
I wasn’t hungry, and Papa’s appetite was down, too, judging by the way he picked at his food and picked at making conversation.
From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns
It will be a reminder of what food media can offer when it chooses to nourish more than our appetites.
From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2026
"It was a conflicted time because I thought I'm not like those women so where do I go to find something that fits with what I feel about life and the appetites I have."
From BBC ● May 29, 2026
“The Beast in Me” “Recent trends suggest this race might come down to voters’ appetites for bleak British miniseries.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
They also argued that GLP-1 use was likelier to lead people to cut back on snacking more, as they save their appetites for dining out.
From MarketWatch ● May 14, 2026
He says food is a shock to the system and he doesn’t know where we get our appetites.
From "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt
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.
