Anhungred

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Archaic term for feeling hungry, or keenly craving something with great eagerness
2. An old-fashioned word describing someone who is famished or longs intensely for food or for something desired
3. Literary and obsolete, meaning hungry or yearning eagerly for nourishment or for a strongly wanted thing

Etymology: "Anhungred" is an obsolete spelling of "anhungered," the past participle of "hunger" used as an adjective in the sense of starved or famished. The prefix comes from Old English "on-," a form of the same element that gave modern "a-" in words like "aside" and "ashore," which was used with participles to mean "in the state of" or "in the process of." So the word literally describes someone who has been brought into a state of hunger. The spelling changed over the centuries as the prefix and the ending were written in different ways. Middle English alone produced "an hongred," "anhongred," "an-hungryd," and "on hongred," reflecting a period when scribes had no fixed spelling and wrote the same word several different ways. Writers also used "of hingrede" and "ofhungred," showing how easily the prefix could be attached or separated.