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Athirst vs Thirst - What's the difference?

athirst | thirst |

As an adjective athirst

is thirsty.

As a noun thirst is

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.

As a verb thirst is

to be thirsty.

athirst

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • (archaic) Thirsty.
  • * 1851 , Herman Melville, Moby-Dick :
  • 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.
  • * Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
  • 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
  • (figuratively) Eager or extremely desirous (for something).
  • Anagrams

    * * *

    thirst

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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.
  • * 1918 , (Edgar Rice Burroughs), Chapter IV
  • "We haven't one chance for life in a hundred thousand if we don't find food and water upon Caprona. This water coming out of the cliff is not salt; but neither is it fit to drink, though each of us has drunk. It is fair to assume that inland the river is fed by pure streams, that there are fruits and herbs and game. Shall we lie out here and die of thirst and starvation with a land of plenty possibly only a few hundred yards away? We have the means for navigating a subterranean river. Are we too cowardly to utilize this means?"
  • (figuratively) A want and eager desire after anything; a craving or longing; — usually with for, of, or after; as, the thirst for gold.
  • Synonyms

    * (figuratively) craving, longing

    See also

    * hunger

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To be thirsty.
  • * Bible, Exodus xvii. 3
  • The people thirsted there for water.
  • To desire.
  • * Bible, Psalms xlii. 2
  • My soul thirsteth for the living God.
    I thirst for knowledge and education will sate me.

    Anagrams

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