hungry

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”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌŋɡɹi
• Homophone: Hungary (in some accents)
• Hyphenation: hun‧gry

hungry (comparative hungrier, superlative hungriest)

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

   Synonyms: famished, peckish, starving

   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.

2. Causing hunger.

   All this gardening is hungry work.

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

   young and hungry

   the students are hungry to learn

   • 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]:

     Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

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

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

   • 2022 November 23, Hadley Freeman, “Like a cinema virgin: how Madonna went stratospheric making Desperately Seeking Susan”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

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

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

   a hungry soil

   • 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]:

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

• thirsty
• I am hungry

• hongry, hungery, hungri, hungrie, hungrye, hungury
• houngrie, hungrig (Early Middle English); hunnꟑriȝ (Ormulum)
• hungre, hungorie (Late Middle English)

From Old English hungriġ, from Proto-Germanic *hungragaz; equivalent to hunger +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhunɡriː/, [ˈhuŋɡriː]

hungry

1. Hungry or starving; needing food:
   1. Malnourished: shriveled from or like from hunger.
   2. Voracious, ravenous; wanting to eat.
2. (rare, religion) Spiritually desirous.
3. (rare, of soil) Unproductive, barren.

• hungryly

• English: hungry
• Scots: hungry
• Yola: hungree

• “hungrī(e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

hungry

1. Those who are hungry or impoverished.

• “hungrī(e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 19 September 2018.