hungry
Americanadjective
-
hungrier,
comparative
-
hungriest
superlative
-
having a desire, craving, or need for food; feeling hunger.
- Synonyms:
- ravenous
- Antonyms:
- satiated
-
indicating, characteristic of, or characterized by hunger.
He approached the table with a hungry look.
-
strongly or eagerly desirous.
-
lacking needful or desirable elements; not fertile; poor.
hungry land.
-
marked by a scarcity of food.
The depression years were hungry times.
-
Informal. aggressively ambitious or competitive, as from a need to overcome poverty or past defeats.
a hungry investment firm looking for wealthy clients.
adjective
-
desiring food
-
experiencing pain, weakness, or nausea through lack of food
-
having a craving, desire, or need (for)
-
expressing or appearing to express greed, craving, or desire
-
lacking fertility; poor
-
informal
-
greedy; grasping
-
stingy; mean
-
-
(of timber) dry and bare
Synonym Usage
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 Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of hungry
First recorded before 950; Middle English, Old English hungrig. See hunger, -y 1
Explanation
Are you hungry? If your stomach is growling, you're probably hungry, which is how you’d describe that uncomfortable feeling in your gut when you go too long without eating food. Feeling hungry is a gnawing sensation that can be fixed by eating something. For some people, getting food isn’t so easy, and you’ll see poor folk on the street with a hungry look in their eyes. If your hunger has a particular food in mind, you could say that you are "hungry for” that food, like being hungry for macaroni right after seeing a commercial about macaroni.
Vocabulary lists containing hungry
"The Three Chicarrones"
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
Spelling Practice, Unit 1
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
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:
And if all that browsing makes you hungry and you spot Tom’s Smokehouse food truck, get the brisket.
From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026
"We have a good team, we have an ambitious team, we have hungry players who are really keen to show themselves."
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
"Now we are stranded here, hungry, with nothing to eat," she added.
From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026
Michael Gonzales, a sailor on the Petersen, said that there were days when he felt hungry, but other sailors said they always received enough.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
If he’s not pleased, we are extra hungry.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
Not only do sugar spikes contribute to the long-term development of metabolic disease, it can also leave you hungrier by midmorning than if you had eaten nothing at all.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 21, 2026
Overall, the findings show that animals do not simply become hungrier when nutrients are missing.
From Science Daily ● May 28, 2026
The Gunners boss said Arsenal are "hungrier than ever" and that the defeats do not change the importance of the last-eight match against Sporting.
From BBC ● Apr. 6, 2026
Djokovic grew up in war-torn Serbia and has spoken about how his turbulent childhood made him hungrier for success.
From Barron's ● Jan. 31, 2026
And Fenris Wolf grew huger and hungrier with each day that passed.
From "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman
By all rights, Chief Executive Robert Davis should be the hungriest shopper in the aisle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
I’m usually the hungriest really late at night, so I might order something against my better judgment like the hippy vegan ramen from Tatstu.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2025
Astronomers claimed on Monday that they had discovered what might be the hungriest, most luminous object in the visible universe — a supermassive black hole that was swallowing a star a day.
From New York Times ● Feb. 21, 2024
In war-torn Gaza, he said, no one has enough to eat and the tiny strip accounts for 80% of the 700,000 hungriest people in the world.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 13, 2024
Nobody can do that, not even the hungriest magician in the world.
From "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie
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.
