hungry

comparative hungrier · superlative hungriest

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

   He was so hungry he could eat two burgers.

   2 more examples

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

   I woke up very hungry and made some toast.

   Synonyms: famished, peckish, starving

2. Causing hunger.

   All this gardening is hungry work.

3. figurativelyEager; having an avid desire or appetite for something.

   young and hungry

   4 more examples

   the students are hungry to learn

   Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]

   They rowed her in across the rolling foam, / The cruel, crawling foam, / The cruel, hungry foam, / To her grave beside the sea:

   1850, [Charles Kingsley], chapter V, in Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 5

   It’s an astonishing roll call of future talent from when they were still young and hungry in Manhattan.

   2022 November 23, Hadley Freeman, “Like a cinema virgin: how Madonna went stratospheric making Desperately Seeking Susan”, in The Guardian

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

   a hungry soil

   1 more example

   […] What is this? / Your knees to me? to your corrected son? / Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach / Fillip the stars […]

   c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]