Dictionary

athirst en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /əˈθɜːst/ (UK)

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English athirst, from Old English ofþyrst, past participle of ofþyrstan (“to smart from thirst”), equivalent to a- (“of”, Etymology 8) + thirst (verb).

Meanings

1. (archaic) Thirsty.
   • To this extenuated spectre, perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year; but when ahungered and athirst to famine—when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house—Divine Mercy remembers the mourner, […] 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Old Maids”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 264:
   • I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 21:6:
   • Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 1”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
2. (figuratively) Eager or extremely desirous (for something).
   • 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, translated from the Bengali by the author, 5, I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
   • I, that forever feel athirst for glory, Could at this moment be content to lie Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings Were heard of none beside the mournful robins. 1817, John Keats, Sonnet (Written on a blank space at the end of Chaucer’s tale of ‘The Floure And The Leafe’:
   • O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, That were athirst for sleep and no more life And no more love, for peace and no more strife! 1878, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Ave Atque Vale (In Memory of Charles Baudelaire)”, in Poems and Ballads, Second Series, Stanza IV:

Forms

Deriveds

unathirst