hungry
Americanadjective
-
having a desire, craving, or need for food; feeling hunger.
- Synonyms:
- ravenous
- Antonyms:
- satiated
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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
-
having a craving, desire, or need (for)
-
expressing or appearing to express greed, craving, or desire
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lacking fertility; poor
-
informal
-
greedy; grasping
-
stingy; mean
-
-
(of timber) dry and bare
Related Words
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
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.
That afternoon, the boy snuggled with Lisa after his nap and recited “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to her as he turned the pages of the children’s book.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025
"His Hungry Paul is very different to the book, but I love it."
From BBC • Oct. 15, 2025
Evacuation warnings were issued for areas around Hungry Valley, Paradise Ranch and Gorman.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 14, 2025
“I know the life-changing power of food,” Ray said per No Kid Hungry, a national campaign run by the nonprofit Share Our Strength to help kids, families and communities combat hunger and poverty.
From Salon • Jul. 2, 2025
Hungry and trembling, James stood alone out in the open, wondering what to do.
From "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl
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.
