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").
Examples of voracious in a Sentence
Scarlett Conlon, CNN, 4 Mar. 2025
The first part of Cuban’s advice isn’t new: He’s preached the value of voracious reading for years.
—Ashton Jackson, CNBC, 28 Feb. 2025
Lionfish, voracious hunters of native fish in the western Atlantic, have no native predators in the region—so humans are stepping up to consume them.
—Sara Hashemi, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Feb. 2025
The fact that this vibrant, voracious, wonderful raconteur with an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject would die from Alzheimer’s seems all the sadder, with no hope anyone could possibly replace him.
—John Mariani, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Voracious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voracious. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
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voracious
adjective
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