Dictionary Definition
voracious adj
1 excessively greedy and grasping; "a rapacious
divorcee on the prowl"; "ravening creditors"; "paying taxes to
voracious governments" [syn: rapacious, ravening]
2 devouring or craving food in great quantities;
"edacious vultures"; "a rapacious appetite"; "ravenous as wolves";
"voracious sharks" [syn: edacious, esurient, rapacious, ravening, ravenous, wolfish]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
From vorax#Latin < voro#Latin "I devour".Pronunciation
- /vɔːˈreɪ.ʃəs/ or /vəˈreɪ.ʃəs/, /vO:"reI.S@s/, /v@"reI.S@s/
- Rhymes with: -eɪʃəs
Adjective
Quotations
- 1867 — Charles
Dickens, Oliver
Twist, ch 45
- The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.
- 1922 — Walter
Lippmann, Public
Opinion, ch VII
- 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 circumstances station agents and ushers, then his Odyssey will be replete with good meals and bad meals, bathing adventures, compartment-train escapades, and voracious demands for money.
Translations
devouring great quantities of food
having a great appetite for anything
- German: unersättlich
- Polish: zachłanny
- Spanish: voraz
See also
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Apician, a hog for, acquisitive, all-devouring,
ardent, avaricious, avid, bolting, bottomless, cormorant, coveting, covetous, cramming, crapulent, crapulous, desirous, devoted, devouring, dog-hungry,
eager, earnest, edacious, empty, enormous, enthusiastic, esurient, famished, famishing, fasting, fervent, fervid, glutting, gluttonizing, gluttonous, gobbling, gorging, grabby, grasping, greedy, gulping, guttling, guzzling, half-famished,
half-starved, hoggish,
hungering, hungry, hyperphagic, insatiable, insatiate, intemperate, limitless, mercenary, miserly, money-hungry,
money-mad, omnivorous, overgreedy, passionate, peckish, piggish, pinched with hunger,
polyphagic, predacious, prodigious, quenchless, rapacious, ravening, ravenous, satiating, sating, sharp-set, slakeless, sordid, starved, starving, stuffing, surfeiting, swinish, thirsty, unappeasable, unappeased, uncontrollable, uncontrolled, unfilled, unquenchable, unsated, unsatisfied, unslakeable, unslaked, venal, wolfing, wolfish, zealous