a. [f. L. vorācī-, vorax, f. vorāre to devour + -OUS. Cf. F. vorace, It. vorace, Sp. and Pg. voraz.]
1. Of animals (rarely of persons, or of the throat): Eating with greediness; devouring food in large quantities; gluttonous, ravenous. Also const. of.
1693. Congreve, in Dryden’s Juvenal, xi. (1697), 283. Well may they fear some miserable End,… Whose large voracious Throats have swallow’d All.
1699. Dampier, Voy., II. 68. The King Carrion Crows … are very voracious, and will dispatch a carkass in a trice.
1725. De Foe, Voy. round World (1840), 231. The Spaniards are … cruel, inexorable, uncharitable, voracious.
1750. G. Hughes, Barbados, 81. These [Cockroaches] are very troublesome, being voracious of most kinds of dressed victuals.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 88. All the Indians of South America … are in general excessively voracious.
1819. Stephens, in Shaw’s Gen. Zool., XI. II. 616. All the species being extremely voracious.
1855. Orr’s Circ. Sci., Inorg. Nat., 69. At the earliest introduction of fishes we find the voracious and highly organized tribe of sharks fully represented.
1861. J. R. Greene, Man. Anim. Kingd., Cœlent., 229. Yet are the Ctenophora very voracious, feeding on a number of floating marine animals.
transf. 1850. Carlyle, Latter-d. Pamph., ii. (1872), 45. I had seen him about a year before,… and had noted well the unlovely voracious look of him.
b. fig. Of persons: Excessively greedy or eager in some desire or pursuit. Also const. of.
1746. Francis, trans. Horace, Epist., I. ii. 34. Circe’s Cups … Which with his Mates, voracious of their Woe, If he had blindly tasted [etc.].
1812. Examiner, 7 Sept., 571/2. A … most voracious believer he is.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, I. iv. A voracious observer and participator in all things he likewise all along was.
1883. Evangelical Mag., Sept., 419. Mr. Rowlands … was a voracious reader.
c. transf. Of things.
1767. A. Young, Farmer’s Lett. to People, 111. He will abhor the practice of sowing so voracious a vegetable after wheat.
1784. Cowper, Task, IV. 450. Twitch’d from the perch, He gives the princely bird, with all his wives, To his voracious bag.
2. Characterized by voracity or greediness. Also fig.
1635. J. Taylor (Water P.), Very Old Man, in Hindley, III. 12. All Creatures are Made for mans use, and may by Man be us’d, Not by voracious Gluttony abus’d.
1720. Welton, Suffer. Son of God, II. xxvii. 709. This Miscreant thought of nothing else but how to glut his Voracious Appetite.
1800. Med. Jrnl., III. 62. He had such a voracious appetite that he would take with indifference either medicine or food.
1875. Chambers’s Jrnl., 2 Jan., 45/2. [The snail’s] appetite is as voracious as its means of indulging it are perfect.
b. fig. Of desires, interests, etc.: Insatiable.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 452, ¶ 5. They have a Relish for every thing that is News, let the matter of it be what it will; or, to speak more properly, they are Men of a Voracious Appetite, but no Taste.
1852. H. Rogers, Ess. (1874), I. vii. 342. He took revenge for his transient fit of scepticism by a subsequent most voracious dogmatism.
a. 1854. H. Reed, Lect. Brit. Poets, x. (1857), II. 22. His appetite for argument was as voracious as his physical appetite.
