appetite
Pluralappetites
- 1The natural desire to take in food or drink.
His appetite returned slowly as he recovered from the flu.
The dessert looked tempting, but she had little appetite left after such a heavy meal.
Similarhunger
Note
Hunger has its own favorite adjectives. Conan Doyle's Holmes comes back from exercise with "an excellent appetite," and Ben Travers writes of a "ravenous" one. The standing idiom is to whet the appetite. Whet means to sharpen, so a first taste makes the hunger keener rather than satisfying it. A 1985 National Fisherman piece applies it to Americans' thirst for beer after Prohibition.
- 2Any strong desire; an eagerness or longing for something.
Investors showed little appetite for risk after the market downturn.
Her appetite for adventure took her to six continents before she turned thirty.
Similardesire, taste, enthusiasm, hunger, thirst
Note
Here the word stands closer to its Latin origin than the hunger for food does. Appetere meant "to strive after, long for," built from ad "toward" and petere "to seek," the same root as petition. The usual construction is appetite for plus a noun, as in Macaulay's "vulgar appetite for the marvellous." Antiquitates Christianæ (1678) instead takes an infinitive: "an appetite to swim."
- 3A craving for some personal gratification, whether bodily or mental.
He indulged every appetite, from fine wine to flattery, with little thought for tomorrow.
Her appetite for praise shaped almost every decision she made at work.
Similardesire, craving, hunger, thirst
Note
The sense has a philosophical pedigree. Richard Hooker, writing in the 1590s, sets appetite against will. For him, appetite reaches for "whatsoever sensible good may be wished for," while the will seeks the good that reason points to. In that older moral vocabulary, appetite is the pull of desire rather than a choice. Today it simply takes for and an object, bodily or intellectual alike, as in an appetite for reading.
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Origin
It comes from Middle English appetit, from Old French apetit, from Latin appetitus, from appetere ("to strive after, long for"), formed from ad + petere ("to seek").