hungry

American  

[huhng-gree] / ˈhʌŋ gri /

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.

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hungry British  

/ 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

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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

• hungrily
  adverb
• hungriness
  noun

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.

Example Sentences

A hungry Grogu uses the Force to steal cheddar ranch tots, garlic chicken fries, a Whopper burger and a blue milkshake.

From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026

"Every player there needs to prove themselves and everyone is hungry and they're not bored of playing many years on tour," he says.

From BBC • May 19, 2026

Cerebras Systems’ successful initial public offering this week shows that investors are hungry for ways to play the boom in artificial-intelligence chips — but shares are now extremely pricey.

From MarketWatch • May 15, 2026

In hungry America investors would back people with no name but a brilliant idea.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 14, 2026

The whole village was hungry, except the miller and his family.

From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff

Related Words

• eager
• greedy
• keen
• ravenous
• starved