ravening
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Present participle of the obsolete verb raven (“to prey”).
Inflected forms:
form: more ravening
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most ravening
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: ravenings
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Voracious and greedy.
pos: adj
examples: There is no shortage of ravening friends and relatives on the day one hits the lottery.
1555, Richard Eden (translator), The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India by Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, London: Edward Sutton, Decade 3, Book 5, p. 116,
They eate mans fleshe but seldome, bycause they meete not oftentymes with strangiers, except they goo foorth of theyr owne dominions with a mayne army of purpose to hunt for men, when theyr rauenynge appetite pricketh them forwarde.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
[…] then, when sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have sufficiently indulged his meditations with what King he shall next glut his ravening maw […]
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat—“canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day? […]”
After an hour or so the veil lifted and discovered beneath it fifty horsemen, ravening lions to the sight, in steel armour dight. We observed them straightly, and lo! they were cutters-off of the highway, wild as wild Arabs.
gloss: Subject to the voracity of a predator.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
examples: To be the strongers rauening pray the weaker did begin,
And might went for oppressed right […]
Away with him into the open fields, To be a rauening pray to Crowes and Kites:
gloss: Predation (by an animal); voracious eating or consumption.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
literary
examples: Some rather deuoure than eate their meate non other wyse than suche as be ledde in to prison. This rauenyng and deuourynge is appropred to theues.
Consider whether the lusty person were in foretyme geuen to moche drynkyng, eatyng and rauenyng, tomoch ease, to no exercise or bathinges in his helth, or no.
Diascorides sayth, that this roote being stamped to poulder, and being bespiced or bestrewed vpon their meate, as flesh, and such other things wherwith they liue, destroyeth and killeth the Panther, the Libard, the Wolfe, and all other beastes, those especially which liue by rauening, and that whilst their meate so ordred is in their mouth.
[…] with his shovel he had fed
The roaring and insatiable red
Ravening of the furnace […]
[B]ut his fate that night
was due to change, his days of ravening
had come to an end.
gloss: Eagerness for plunder; rapacity; extortion.
pos: noun
examples: We must kyll diuelish pryde, furious angre, insatiable couetousnes, filthy lucre, stinking lechery, deadly hatred & malice, foxy wilines, woluish rauening & deuouring, and al other vnreasonable lustes and desires of the fleshe.
And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.
Thus lived this lazy Drone upon the Labours of the Industrious Bees; to his high Content, and their no small Trouble: to whom his Company was as Offensive, as his Ravening was Oppressive: nor could they get any Relief, by their complaining of him to the Keepers.
Derived words: raveningly
Translations: