What does ahungered mean?
Ahungered is an archaic English adjective meaning hungry — that is, experiencing the desire for food. It belongs to a once-productive family of participial adjectives formed with the prefix a-, a reduced form of the Old English verbal prefix ge- (and earlier y-), which turned verbs into descriptive states: think of "afire," "asleep," or "awake." In ahungered's case, the base verb was hunger, so the word literally meant "in a state of hungering." Its most famous appearance is in the King James Bible of 1611, rendered there as "an hungred": "I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat." Outside scripture and classic literature, the word has effectively vanished from everyday speech, displaced by the plain adjective hungry. Today it survives as a deliberately archaic flourish, useful to writers seeking a biblical or antique tone. Readers encountering it should understand it not as a separate concept but as an old-fashioned way of saying simply that someone is hungry.
adjectiveArchaic and literary: feeling hunger; hungry. A now-rare participial adjective formed with the old a- prefix, found chiefly in older English literature and biblical translation.
- Feeling hunger; hungry (archaic/literary)
"The travellers arrived at the inn weary and ahungered."
"The pilgrims, footsore and ahungered, rejoiced at the sight of the monastery gates."
"He spoke of the poor who came to his door ahungered each winter."
You've probably read it without noticing: the King James Bible's "I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat" is this very word at work.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of ahungered
Ahungered derives from the Old English verb hungerian (to hunger), combined with the a- prefix, a weakened descendant of the Old English participial prefix ge-. This pattern produced a whole class of state adjectives such as asleep, afire, and athirst, many of which likewise survive only in archaic or literary use. The underlying root is the Germanic *hungruz, which also yields the common noun hunger and its continental cognates: German Hunger, Dutch honger, and Swedish hunger. The word was current in Middle and early modern English and is preserved most famously in the 1611 King James Bible.
How ahungered is actually used
Highly archaic; today it survives mainly in quotations from early modern English, the King James Bible, and deliberate literary pastiche. Using it in modern prose signals an antique or elevated register and should be done knowingly.
Easily confused with ahungered
"Hungered" is the ordinary past participle of the verb hunger (or simply means very hungry), while "ahungered" is an archaic variant carrying the old a- prefix, used almost exclusively in literary or biblical registers.