hunger

See Also: EATING AND DRINKING

1. Appetite … as hot as a fire —Henry Fielding
2. Appetite … as insatiable as the sun’s —Wallace Stevens
3. Had an appetite like a chain saw —Harry Prince
4. Appetite like a sparrow —Jilly Cooper
5. Ate as heartily as a hungry pike —Howard Spring
6. Ate like a gang of hungry threshers —Erich Maria Remarque
7. Belly as empty as a wind instrument —Isaac Babel
8. Hunger makes beans taste like almonds —Italian proverb
9. Hunger stirred in him like a small animal —Carlos Baker
10. Hungry as a bear —John Ray’s Proverbs

    Of all the “Hungry as” similes, the link with bears, lions and wolves is one of the most enduring

11. (I came home) hungry as a hunter —Charles Lamb
12. Hungry as a nanny goat —Ben Hecht

    This simple and direct line from a play entitled Winkleberg marks a departure from Hecht’s bent for far-fetched comparisons.

13. Hungry as a schoolboy —Raymond Chandler
14. Hungry as the grave —James Thomson
15. Nibbled like a minnow —Howard Spring
16. Passengers clustered around a food stall like ants trying to drag a crumb of cake back to their nest —Derek Lambert
17. Ravenous as gulls over a fishing boat —Marge Piercy
18. [A voracious eater] sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way —Erich Maria Remarque
19. So hungry, it was as if there was a hand in our stomachs, like purses, rifling through them —Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
20. Stomach … as hollow as any trumpet —Henry Fielding

die like Roland To die from hunger or thirst. Legend has it that Roland, after having escaped the massacre at Ron-cevalles, ironically died of starvation and thirst while trying to cross the Pyrenees.

dine with Duke Humphrey To go hungry; to partake of a Barmecide feast. According to the usual but perhaps apocryphal account, the expression derives from the practice of London’s poor who, come the dinner hour when the streets began to empty of those preparing to dine, were wont to wander the aisles of St. Paul’s claiming to be in search of the monument to Duke Humphrey. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was renowned for his hospitality, and at his death it was rumored that there was to be a monument to his bounty erected in St. Paul’s. None such was ever built; thus, to dine with Duke Humphrey is to have no place at which to dine, to wander idly while others eat.

Another explanation holds that the phrase originally meant to dine well; after the Duke’s death, its meaning naturally became inverted to the current one.

narrow at the equator Hungry, ravenous, famished. In this expression, purportedly used by American cowboys in the Old West, equator refers to a person’s waist which, in cases of extreme or prolonged hunger, might be narrower than usual.

sup with Sir Thomas Gresham To go hungry. London’s layabouts and idle poor commonly frequented the Exchange, which was built by Sir Thomas Gresham. Thus, those who had nowhere to dine, or no money with which to dine, were often said to sup with Sir Thomas Gresham. The phrase is not nearly so common as its near synonym to dine with Duke Humphrey.