DEVOURING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does devouring mean? 

• DEVOURING (adjective)
  The adjective DEVOURING has 1 sense:

1. (often followed by 'for') ardently or excessively desirous

  Familiarity information: DEVOURING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEVOURING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(often followed by 'for') ardently or excessively desirous

Synonyms:

avid; devouring; esurient; greedy

Context example:

greedy for fame

Similar:

desirous; wishful (having or expressing desire for something)

 Context examples 

Spider-like cells inside the brain, spinal cord and eye hunt for invaders, capturing and then devouring them.

(In blinding eye disease, trash-collecting cells go awry, accelerate damage, NIH)

Have you seen that awful den of hellish infamy—with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and every speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The newly found black hole is voraciously devouring material at the center of a galaxy — a phenomenon called a quasar.

(Most Distant Black Hole, NASA)

My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He had put his pack down as a table, and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down with some drink from a stone jar.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said ““Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other dogs—in fact out of sight behind a thicket—he was devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in upon him.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Space is filled with radiation from nearby stars as well as from violent events in deep space like exploding stars and black holes devouring matter.

(Vitamin B3 might have been made in space, delivered to Earth by meteorites, NASA)

And, I say, Peterson, just buy a goose on your way back and leave it here with me, for we must have one to give to this gentleman in place of the one which your family is now devouring.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)