hungering

Pluralhungerings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of hunger.

   By midwinter the whole village was hungering for fresh meat.

   Voters hungering for honest leadership turned out in record numbers.

   Note

   One -ing form doing two jobs. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (was hungering) and describes nouns (voters hungering for change). As a gerund it names the activity itself. Literal hunger rarely needs a complement, but the figurative sense of longing usually takes for. Older English could also use the verb transitively, meaning to famish someone. Unlike the noun, the gerund can still take an adverb.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The condition of someone who feels hunger, or who craves something strongly.

   Her lifelong hungering for approval shaped nearly every decision she made.

   The drought left a hungering across the region that no harvest could quickly relieve.

   Similarcraving, yearning, longing, desire

   Note

   A noun that readily goes plural, counting cravings one by one. John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1680) speaks of "hungerings and thirstings after him": spiritual longings for the Saviour. That pairing with thirstings, and the preposition after, give the word a devotional ring. In modern prose it suits a sustained, inward longing, while hunger remains the plainer word for an empty stomach.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2