hungry

[ huhng-gree ]
/ ˈhʌŋ gri /

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.

Origin of hungry

before 950; Middle English, Old English hungrig. See hunger, -y1

SYNONYMS FOR hungry

1 ravenous, famishing, starving. 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 ).

ANTONYMS FOR hungry

1 sated, satiated, surfeited.

OTHER WORDS FROM hungry

hun·gri·ly, adverb hun·gri·ness, noun

WORDS THAT MAY BE CONFUSED WITH hungry

Hungary hungry (see synonym study at the current entry)

Example sentences from the Web for hungry

British Dictionary definitions for hungry

hungry
/ (ˈhʌŋɡrɪ) /

adjective -grier or -griest

Derived forms of hungry

hungrily or hungeringly, adverb hungriness, noun