voracious

Wanting or devouring great quantities of food.

Adjective

  1. Wanting or devouring great quantities of food.
    • He is voracious by suppertime.
    • His appetite is voracious by suppertime.
    • I never had so much as […] one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages. - 1719 May 6 (Gregorian...
  2. Having a great appetite for anything; eager.
    • a voracious reader
    • If he carried chiefly his appetite, a zeal for tiled bathrooms, a conviction that the Pullman car is the acme of human comfort, and a belief that it is proper to tip waiters, taxicab drivers, and barbers, but under no...
    • Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find. - 2005 August 29, Nathan Thornburgh, “The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies”, in Time:

Origin

From Latin vorāx, from vorō (“to devour”).

Forms

more voracious most voracious

Synonyms

eager cormorant edacious esurient gluttonous gutfoundered hungry as a hog insatiable lupine pantagruelian rapacious ravening ravenous voracious

Antonyms

abstemious unvoracious

Hypernyms

greedy hungry

Related

devouring omnivorous voracity greed glutton

Derived

unvoracious voraciously voraciousness