Hungry

//ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food.

    "My kids go to bed hungry every night because I haven’t got much money for food."

  2. 2
    Causing hunger.

    "All this gardening is hungry work."

  3. 3
    Eager; having an avid desire or appetite for something. figuratively

    "young and hungry"

  4. 4
    Not rich or fertile; poor; barren; starved.

    "a hungry soil"

Adjective
  1. 1
    (usually followed by ‘for’) extremely desirous wordnet
  2. 2
    feeling hunger; feeling a need or desire to eat food wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
athirstfamishedpeckishstarvingacquisitiveathirst

Example

More examples

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."

Etymology

From Middle English hungry, from Old English hungriġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hungrug, from Proto-Germanic *hungrugaz (“hungry”); equivalent to hunger + -y. Cognate with West Frisian hongerich (“hungry”), Dutch hongerig (“hungry”), German hungrig (“hungry”), Swedish hungrig (“hungry”), Icelandic hungraður (“hungry”).

Related phrases

Hungry Ghost FestivalI'm hungrya hungry man is an angry mango hungryhungry as a hoghungry gaphungry ghosthungry like the wolfhungry ricemoney-hungrypower-hungrystay hungry

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.