Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sensation of dryness in the mouth and throat related to a need or desire to drink.
- n. The desire to drink.
- n. An insistent desire; a craving: a thirst for knowledge.
- v. To feel a need to drink.
- v. To have a strong craving; yearn.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A waterless region.
- n. A feeling of dryness in the mouth and throat; the uncomfortable sensations arising from the want of fluid nutriment; the uneasiness or suffering occasioned by want of drink; vehement desire for drink. The sensations of thirst are chiefly referred to the thorax and fauces, but the condition is really one affecting the entire body. The excessive pains of thirst compared with those of hunger are due to the fact that the deprivation of liquids is a condition with which all the tissues sympathize. Every solid and every fluid of the body contains water, and hence abstraction or diminution of the watery constituents is followed by a general depression of the whole system. Thirst is a common symptom of febrile and other diseases. Death from thirst, as of persons in a desert, appears to be invariably preceded by acute mania.
- n. Figuratively, an ardent desire for anything; a craving.
- To experience uncomfortable sensations for want of drink; have desire to drink; be dry.
- To have a vehement desire; crave.
- To have a thirst for, literally or figuratively; desire ardently; crave: now usually followed by an infinitive as the object.
Wiktionary
- n. A sensation of dryness in the throat associated with a craving for liquids, produced by deprivation of drink, or by some other cause (as fear, excitement, etc.) which arrests the secretion of the pharyngeal mucous membrane; hence, the condition producing this sensation.
- n. figurative A want and eager desire after anything; a craving or longing; — usually with for, of, or after; as, the thirst for gold.
- v. To desire.
- v. To be thirsty.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A sensation of dryness in the throat associated with a craving for liquids, produced by deprivation of drink, or by some other cause (as fear, excitement, etc.) which arrests the secretion of the pharyngeal mucous membrane; hence, the condition producing this sensation.
- n. Fig.: A want and eager desire after anything; a craving or longing; -- usually with
for ,of , orafter . - v. To feel thirst; to experience a painful or uneasy sensation of the throat or fauces, as for want of drink.
- v. To have a vehement desire.
- v. rare To have a thirst for.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a physiological need to drink
- n. strong desire for something (not food or drink)
- v. have a craving, appetite, or great desire for
- v. feel the need to drink
Etymologies
- From Old English þurst. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English thurst; see ters- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Zoretti was an Italian nobleman -- "one of those characters in whose bosom resides an unquenchable thirst of avarice" [ "_thirst_ of _avarice_" is good!], etc.”
“Hunger and thirst after righteousness' -- I do desire it -- I do not '_hunger and thirst_.”
“The word "thirst, " rhyming with "first" may make you think of the first water you drank in a certain place or with a certain person.”
The Huffington Post: Ruth Gerson: How to Write a Song: For Writer's Block or Beginners
“After a "lifelong, congenital disappointment," a deeper thirst is troubling him, too, a desperate desire for a kind of beauty that seems out of reach: "He can't stop himself from mourning some lost world, he couldn't say which world exactly but someplace that isn't this.”
The Washington Post: Michael Cunningham's "By Nightfall," reviewed by Ron Charles
“NEONBEAR yea, i'd say thirst is his next best movie after oldboy. mikeyrogers”
“Oh yeah, dying of thirst from the water they took to do that scam.”
“Then when my thirst is of extreme and dire need, I tilt the bowl back and drink the entire contents in one long haul.”
“It constitutes an artificial pleasure more than a natural need: this thirst is inextinguishable, because the drinks one takes to appease it have the unfailing effect of causing it to arise anew; this thirst, which ends up becoming habitual, makes for the drunkards of all countries; and it almost always happens that the impotation ceases only when the liquor is lacking, or when it has vanquished the drinker and put him out of action.”
Economies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and Baudelaire
“While many forecasters say the world's long-term thirst for oil should keep prices at a simmer for years to come, they aren't ruling out a return to double digits for now.”
The Wall Street Journal: Oil Set to Fall Past $100, but Its Stay May Be Brief
“I think this thirst is very real, as I mentioned here.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘thirst’.
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Guide to the Perplexed
Lexicon of terms set forth in Maimonides 'Guide to the Perplexed'. A fascinating exercise in theosophy and translation if one substitutes these definitions for a "revised" reading of the Old Testa...
eye, apprehend, associations, air, ruah : or ruhoth,..., affection, attribute, approach, accidents, ascending, articulated, back and 119 more...
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®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
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Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
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RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
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Figuratively
Words with definitions containing "figuratively."
spore, plunge, fulminate, rasp, hinge, niche, breathe, approach, hammer, rain, butcher, dazzle and 132 more...
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Written on Water
An eclectic list of words pertaining to and describing water.
"...I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the...water, rain, cistern, thirst, dead-water, eddy-water, surge, flood, ebb, fluid, flow, liquor amnii and 202 more...
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I'm Not There
Favorite words from Bob Dylan and the movie "I'm Not There"
raincoat, dreamer, create, poet, trapeze, drainpipes, visions, highway, harmonicas, rain, tombstone, geometry and 8 more...
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You're All Wet!
Wet words
dripping, soaked, flooded, drenched, plastered, flowing, wringing, torrential, h2o'd, splashed, skeezing, thirsted and 21 more...
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Random Words
lochia, confused, innoxious, naive, cockatrice, derisive, parsley, passive, casual, football, innuendo, Rumanian and 172 more...
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eesome
Includes any intangible conceivable independently of Hom. Sap.
depthless, overspire, unsteady, thitherward, rile, munchable, covet, pastinaceous, mirtle, slonk, tink, inerrarable and 345 more...
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Jacqueline's Words
glittery, horny, amazing, wanderlust, forlorn, lustily, nonchalant, cool, passive, submissive, roundabout, carousel and 558 more...
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The Pogues
transmetropolitan, lecher, queer, shite, whore, bastard, spew, bloody, waxie's dargle, farthing, pint, races and 91 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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Bible names
noah, almighty, cain, abel, father, mother, israel, king, sanctuary, spirit, psalm, blessing and 236 more...
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eloise's Words
embrace, perfect, imagine, dance, water, color, echo, hollow, sorrow, beauty, impossible, violet and 438 more...
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The Five? Senses
sight, vision, hearing, audition, taste, gustation, smell, olfaction, touch, tactition, mechanoreception, stereopsis and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for thirst.

brobbins lack of knowledge Jul 24, 2009