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View synonyms for hungry

hungry

[ huhng-gree ]

adjective

, hun·gri·er, hun·gri·est.
  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.



hungry

/ ˈhʌŋɡrɪ /

adjective

  1. desiring food
  2. experiencing pain, weakness, or nausea through lack of food
  3. postpositivefoll byfor 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
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Derived Forms

  • ˈhungriness, noun
  • ˈhungrily, adverb
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Other Words From

  • hungri·ly adverb
  • hungri·ness noun
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Word History and Origins

Origin of hungry1

First recorded before 950; Middle English, Old English hungrig. See hunger, -y 1
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Synonym Study

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 ).
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Example Sentences

Covid-19 plunged the United States into a recession, leaving millions of Americans out of work and hungry.

From Vox

In other words, if students stay at home, some will be more vulnerable and more hungry and more isolated.

The biggest takeaway from the research, however, was less about the hungry sea creatures and more about the underwater recorders.

That low-power system, however, is meant more for smaller, less power-hungry devices like smart locks and security sensors.

The enormous datasets compiled to feed these data-hungry algorithms capture everything on the internet.

The city protests that a beach is not a suitable place to feed the hungry.

Springsteen originally wrote his first big hit, “Hungry Heart,” for the Ramones.

He's dazzling, fielding questions, spinning out anecdotes and limericks, sounding 35 and hungry for publicity.

And to do that, you have to forget that you have been hungry, too.

I managed to keep the salad down, but I left the restaurant hungry.

And he had waited so long for Grandfather Mole that he had begun to feel hungry again.

We make fast the doors of our lighted houses against the indigent and the hungry.

That was because he was hungry, you see, but pigs nearly always eat fast, as though they were continually in a hurry.

“Mon pauvre petit, you are hungry,” said Aristide, carrying it to the car racked by the clattering engine.

A very little crust thrown to the very hungry is always accepted with gratitude.

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