different between famish vs ravenous

English

Etymology

From Middle English famisshe, from famen (“starve”), from Old French afamer. Compare affamish, famine. Cognate with Spanish hambre (“hunger”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?fam??/

Verb

famish (third-person singular simple present famishes, present participle famishing, simple past and past participle famished)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To starve (to death); to kill or destroy with hunger.
2. (transitive) To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to cause to be very hungry.
3. (transitive) To kill, or to cause great suffering to, by depriving or denying anything necessary.
4. (transitive) To force, control, or constrain by famine.
   • 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

     He had […] famished Paris into a surrender.

5. (intransitive) To die of hunger; to starve to death.
6. (intransitive) To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to nearly perish.
7. (intransitive) To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary.

Derived terms

• famisher
• famishment

Translations

References

• famish in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

English

Etymology

From Middle English ravenous, ravynous, from Old French ravineus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??æv?n?s/

Adjective

ravenous (comparative more ravenous, superlative most ravenous)

1. Very hungry.
2. Grasping; characterized by strong desires.
   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 3, ch. IX, Working Aristocracy

     Supply-and-demand? One begins to be weary of such work. Leave all to egoism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause: — it is the Gospel of Despair!

Synonyms

• starving (colloquial, figuratively)
• See also Thesaurus:voracious

Derived terms

• ravenously
• ravenousness

Translations

See also

• voracious