hungry
hun·gry/ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/adjective
hungry is spelled H-U-N-G-R-Y, 2 syllables: hun·gry. The wrong spelling people search most is hungy: about 50 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 104 of all searches for the word. Hungry is an adjective meaning “Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food”.
How many letters and syllables are in hungry?
| Letters | 6: H-U-N-G-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: hun·gry |
| In writing | 28 times per million words; the 3,288th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, hungy, about 50 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Sounds like |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell hungry?
Hungry is spelled H-U-N-G-R-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 104 of the searches for hungry in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is hungry?
Hungry appears 28 times per million words in written English, the 3,288th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce hungry?
- US /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/
- /ˈhʊŋɡɹi/
- /ˈhʌŋɡɾe/
Hungry has 2 syllables, split hun·gry in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-hungry.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with hungry
Sounds like: Hungary (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of hungry
- hungrier comparative
- hungriest superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does hungry mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food.
My kids go to bed hungry every night because I haven’t got much money for food.
- 2
Causing hunger.
All this gardening is hungry work.
- 3
Eager; having an avid desire or appetite for something.
young and hungry
- 4
Not rich or fertile; poor; barren; starved.
a hungry soil
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Hungry in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | affamé, avoir faim , désolé, infertile |
| German | hungrig, Hunger haben , gierig |
| Portuguese | faminto, com fome, esfomeado |
| Spanish | hambriento, tener hambre, hambroso, con hambre, hacer hambre |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does hungry come from?
From Middle English hungry, from Old English hungriġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hungrug, from Proto-Germanic *hungrugaz (“hungry”); equivalent to hunger + -y. Cognate with West Frisian hongerich (“hungry”), Dutch hongerig (“hungry”), German hungrig (“hungry”), Swedish hungrig (“hungry”), Icelandic hungraður (“hungry”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).