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.
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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
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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"
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Spelling Practice, Unit 1
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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:
The single male Montagu's harrier has also been working very hard to keep his two nests of hungry chicks fed.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026
If teammates get hungry, he might be lobbied for a trip to McDonald’s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
Everyone who has walked into a grocery store hungry knows how quickly discipline can evaporate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
But Newcastle sporting director Ross Wilson has already noted how Dedic "incredibly hungry" to prove himself.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
When food was scarce in Rin, Rowcin had had to climb trees, bending the leafy branches down to meet the snuffling, eager mouths of the hungry buk-shah.
From "Rowan of Rin" by Emily Rodda
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
Always there is someone hungrier than her own children.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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
“Professor, you wrote so much about takeout,” my hungriest pupil pushed back, “What’s the deal? You against it now?”
From Salon ● Dec. 11, 2023
“The only list you’ll find me on is the hungriest customer list,” Kelce responded.
From New York Times ● Mar. 5, 2023
Immigrant girls, the girls who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, were the hungriest of all.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
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.
