The story
- Old French · derived fromravineus
- Middle English · inherited fromravenous
- English todayravenous
From Middle English ravenous, ravynous, from Old French ravineus. By surface analysis, ravin + -ous. As seen at raven and ravin, the word comes from a root referring to predation, not from the root referring to ravens (corvid birds); but folk etymology notes that the latter hypothesis seems plausible because ravens can often seem ravenous (especially as nestlings).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.