adjective
-
famished; starving
-
rapacious; voracious
Usage
What does ravenous mean? Ravenous means extremely hungry, as in After being unable to eat solid foods for a week, Isaac was now ravenous.Ravenous in this sense is often used figuratively. You might be hungry but not literally starving and still describe yourself as ravenous.Ravenous also means extremely greedy or predatory. It’s especially used to describe predatory animals, but it’s also used to describe people. Ravenous people may be greedy for riches, fame, or something else that they think will give them satisfaction if they have a lot of it. (Whether they can ever be satisfied is another discussion.)Example: After a long day hiking up the mountain, the hikers were ravenous, inhaling their dinner in a matter of minutes.
Related Words
Ravenous, ravening, voracious suggest a greediness for food and usually intense hunger. Ravenous implies extreme hunger, or a famished condition: ravenous wild beasts. Ravening adds the idea of fierceness and savagery, especially as shown in a violent manner of acquiring food: ravening wolves. Voracious implies craving or eating a great deal of food: a voracious child; a voracious appetite. It may also be used figuratively: a voracious reader.
Other Word Forms
- ravenously adverb
- ravenousness noun
Etymology
Origin of ravenous
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Old French ravineus, equivalent to ravin(er) “to plunder” ( See raven 2 ) + -eus -ous
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.
It was charred black in places and tasted faintly of leather, but the day had left him ravenous; juice rolled down his chin.
From Literature
Either way, fans are ravenous for more information.
From BBC
She’d gone to a handful of parties there not long after her first death, when she was always ravenous and East Tenth Street was “uptown.”
From Literature
A few nights a week, I exit class sweaty and ravenous and walk straight for a grocery store to fill it.
From Salon
Not the ravenous hatred of the murderers and their enablers, but the quiet courage of decent people.
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.
