hunger

Pluralhungers (some meanings)

Formshungers, hungering, hungered

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The need or strong desire for food.

   After the long hike, their hunger drove them straight to the nearest diner.

   Aid workers struggle to relieve hunger in regions hit by drought.

   Similarappetite, starvation, famine

   Oppositefullness, satiety

   Note

   Desire sat inside the word from the start. Old English hungor meant hunger and desire, and famine as well. The Proto-Indo-European root behind it, *kenk-, meant to burn, smart, desire, hunger or thirst. So the broader "strong desire" sense stretches a meaning the word already held. The noun is both countable and uncountable: hunger is usually a mass noun, but the plural hungers exists.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A strong desire or need for something other than food.

   A deep hunger for knowledge kept her in the library long after closing.

   The team played with a hunger that their rivals simply lacked.

   Similardesire, craving, yearning, longing, thirst

   Oppositeindifference, apathy

   Note

   The figurative noun moves easily between registers. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) praises the "sacred hunger of ambitious minds", Curtis Jackson's "What Up Gangsta" (2003) asks whether listeners can sense his, and a 2025 military assessment by Angelica Evans speaks of a "manpower hunger". It takes for plus a noun (a hunger for knowledge) or to plus a verb (a hunger to win). As a compound, a modifier names the thing that is lacking.

3. 3
   verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To feel a strong desire or longing for something.

   Voters hunger for real change after years of broken promises.

   He hungered for adventure but never left his hometown.

   Similaryearn, long, thirst, pine, ache

   Note

   The longing sense usually needs a preposition, and the choice changes the tone. For is the everyday partner, as in a 1993 line by The The about hungering for people beyond reach. After carries the cadence of the King James Bible's "hunger and thirst after righteousnesse". That pairing with thirst is a ready-made doublet for spiritual longing, so after now sounds deliberately elevated.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To be in need of food; to go without enough to eat.

   Refugees who hunger through the winter depend on emergency aid.

   The prisoners hungered for weeks under the harsh regime.

   Similarstarve

   Note

   The verb has its own Old English ancestor, hyngran or hyngrian, "to be hungry". It was not simply made from the noun later. Its forms are regular: hungers, hungering, hungered. The King James Bible of 1611 shows an older grammar in "if thine enemie hunger, feed him". After if, the verb takes the bare form without -s, a subjunctive that modern English would usually write as hungers.

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