Language tip of the week: hungry

In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc.

This week’s language tip helps with other ways of saying hungry:

peckish quite hungry: used especially to talk about feeling hungry when it is not a mealtime:
I often start to feel a bit peckish around mid-morning.
starving or starved (informal) very hungry and wanting to eat immediately:
Have you got any bread? I’m starving!
ravenous extremely hungry, especially because you have not eaten for a long time or you have been doing a lot of physical work:
The children are always ravenous after swimming practice.
famished extremely hungry, especially because you have not eaten for a long time:
Can we order now? I’m famished.