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hungry
[ huhng-gree ]
/ ˈhʌŋ gri /
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adjective, hun·gri·er, hun·gri·est.
having a desire, craving, or need for food; feeling hunger.
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.
QUIZ
THINGAMABOB OR THINGUMMY: CAN YOU DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE US AND UK TERMS IN THIS QUIZ?
Do you know the difference between everyday US and UK terminology? Test yourself with this quiz on words that differ across the Atlantic.
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In the UK, COTTON CANDY is more commonly known as…
synonym study for hungry
1. 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 WORDS FROM hungry
hun·gri·ly, adverbhun·gri·ness, nounWords nearby hungry
hunger strike, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, hung jury, Hungnam, hungover, hungry, Hungtow Island, hung-up, Hung-wu, hunk, hunker
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use hungry in a sentence
British Dictionary definitions for hungry
hungry
/ (ˈhʌŋɡrɪ) /
adjective -grier or -griest
Derived forms of hungry
hungrily or hungeringly, adverbhungriness, nounCollins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
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