hungry
Americanadjective
-
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"
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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:
Alonso described Joao Pedro as "very, very hungry" and "determined to have a great season".
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
This strategy is a long-term bet that domestic and international demand for gas continues to rise as energy hungry data centers proliferate and populations in Asia continue to grow.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
Maybe it’s lower lighting, good hand soap in the bathroom or a beautiful bread course placed on the table before anyone has had time to wonder whether they are hungry.
From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026
The unique conditions the process demanded -- pumping saltwater in and out to maintain a shallow depth -- were also the perfect environment for hungry wading birds.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
He was so hungry he could eat a bat.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
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
“I been hungrier than this,” the hobo told Billy.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
“All of us, from the wealthiest and most powerful of men to the weakest and hungriest of children, share one precious possession: the name American.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026
“I’ve said it a couple times this spring so far, but I think this is the hungriest team I’ve ever had in spring training,” Servais said.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 20, 2024
“Four out of 5 of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza,” U.N.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2023
I rejected meatloaf when I was at my hungriest, sealed my lips shut when my mother tried to shove it in my toddler mouth back in the 80s.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2023
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.
