- voracious
- voracious, gluttonous, ravenous, ravening, rapacious can all mean excessively greedy and can all apply to persons, their appetites and reactions, or their behavior.Voracious implies habitual gorging with food or drink, or with whatever satisfies an excessive appetite{
a voracious eater
}{a voracious reader
}{voracious birds, that hotly bill and breed, and largely drink— Dryden
}Gluttonous differs from voracious chiefly in its common suggestions of covetous delight (as in food) and of acquiring or eating past need or to the point of satiety{he was gluttonous for jewels— Gunther
}{though a Norman was not gluttonous, he was epicurean— Lytton
}{his gluttonous appetite for food, praise, pleasure— Guérard
}Ravenous implies excessive hunger and suggests violent or grasping methods of dealing with food or with whatever satisfies an appetite{he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. . . . The sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey— Macaulay
}{he had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them— Wilde
}Ravening is sometimes employed in place of ravenous{the hordes of ravening ants— Beebe
}but more often it comes close to rapacious in suggesting a violent tendency to seize or appropriate to oneself in the manner of a bird of prey or a predatory animal{beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves— Mt 7:15
}Rapacious may imply the seizure of food{rapacious animals we hate: kites, hawks, and wolves, deserve their fate— Gay
}but more often it suggests excessive and utterly selfish acquisitiveness or cupidity{the Indians, who, though often rapacious, are devoid of avarice— Parkman
}{the European nations, arrogant, domineering, and rapacious, have done little to recommend the name of Christianity in Asia and Africa— Inge
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
