different between voracious vs cormorant

English

Etymology

From Latin vor?x, from vor? (“I devour”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /v????e?.??s/, /v???e?.??s/
• Rhymes: -e???s

Adjective

voracious (comparative more voracious, superlative most voracious)

1. Wanting or devouring great quantities of food.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ch. 6:

     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.

   • 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.

   • 1910, Jack London, "The Human Drift":

     Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions.

2. Having a great appetite for anything.
   • 1922, Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, ch. 7:

     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.

   • 2005, Nathan Thornburgh, "The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies," Time, 29 Aug.:

     Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find.

Synonyms

• (devouring great quantities of food): See Thesaurus:voracious
• (having a great appetite for anything): See Thesaurus:greedy

Derived terms

Related terms

• voracity

Translations

English

Etymology

Middle English, from Old French cormaran (modern cormoran), from Medieval Latin corvus mar?nus (literally “sea-raven”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k??m???nt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k??m???nt/

Noun

cormorant (plural cormorants)

1. Any of various medium-large black seabirds of the family Phalacrocoracidae, especially the great cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4, lines 194-196,^[1]

     Thence up he [Satan] flew, and on the Tree of Life,

     The middle Tree and highest there that grew,

     Sat like a Cormorant;

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 1, Chapter 13, p. 242,^[2]

     One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam;

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Chapter 9, pp. 100-101,^[3]

     The strong air […] has quite restored me. I have an appetite like a cormorant, am full of life, and sleep well.

   • 1987, Nadine Gordimer, A Sport of Nature, New York: Knopf, “Intelligence,” p. 139,^[4]

     A man was swimming out towards them, his flailing arms black and defined in the heat-hazy radiance as the wings of a cormorant that skimmed the water.

2. (obsolete) A voracious eater.

   Synonym: glutton; see also Thesaurus:glutton

   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Scene 1,^[5]

     With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:

     Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

     Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

   • 1725, Alexander Pope (translator), The Odyssey or Homer, London: Bernard Lintot, Volume 1, Book 1, pp. 13-14, lines 207-210,^[6]

     His treasur’d stores these Cormorants consume,

     Whose bones, defrauded of a regal tomb

     And common turf, lie naked on the plain,

     Or doom’d to welter in the whelming main.

Translations

Adjective

cormorant (comparative more cormorant, superlative most cormorant)

1. Ravenous, greedy.

   • Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

     Live regist'red upon our brazen tombs,

     And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

     When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

     The endeavour of this present breath may buy

     That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,

     And make us heirs of all eternity.

See also

• shag