voracious
adjective
Did you know?
Voracious is one of several English words that come from the Latin verb vorare, which means "to eat greedily" or "to devour." Vorare is also an ancestor of devour and of the -ivorous words that describe the diets of various creatures. These include carnivorous ("meat-eating"), herbivorous ("plant-eating"), omnivorous ("feeding on both animals and plants"), frugivorous ("fruit-eating"), graminivorous ("feeding on grass"), and piscivorous ("fish-eating").
Did you know?
Veracious or voracious?
Take care to distinguish between the near-homophones veracious and voracious, whose similarities in sound mask utterly different meanings. Veracious (“honest, truthful”), like its cousins veritable, verify, and very, concerns that which is true. Voracious (”having a greedy or insatiable appetite”), on the other hand, describes the urge to consume large quantities of something, often food, books, or ideas. One way to remember the difference is that the one with the E as its second letter means "truE," and the one with the O as its second letter means "ravenOus." Not coincidentally, these adjectives have near-homophonous noun derivatives: veracity ("truthfulness") and voracity ("the quality or state of being voracious").
Synonyms
Examples of voracious in a Sentence
Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 14 Oct. 2024
Plus, one of the most voracious algae-eaters, the long-spined black sea urchin, began dying in the Caribbean in the 1980s, likely from a waterborne pathogen.
—Benji Jones, Vox, 8 Oct. 2024
Because as water temperatures begin to cool, smallmouth bass become voracious.
—Kubie Brown, Outdoor Life, 3 Oct. 2024
The species, with its efficient reproductive capabilities and voracious appetite, is creating a cascading effect of loss within the ecosystem of the Everglades and surrounding areas, Bartoszek said.
—Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 25 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Voracious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voracious. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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voracious
adjective
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