porkish appetite
- noun
- Archaic
- His porkish appetite embarrassed his friends at the all-you-can-eat buffet.
Examples
-
Despite his slim figure, his porkish appetite amazed everyone at Thanksgiving dinner.
-
His porkish appetite led him to eat three helpings of pasta at dinner.
-
She blamed her porkish appetite on skipping lunch that day.
-
He has a porkish appetite for sweets.
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After the feast, her porkish appetite was finally satisfied.
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At the buffet, her porkish appetite meant she tried a bit of everything on the table.
-
Despite feeling full, he couldn't resist another dessert due to his porkish appetite.
Synonyms
14
7.6
A habit of eating much more food or drink than your body needs
1
9.9
An unusually strong urge to eat much more than normal
1
7.9
A very strong desire for more food, money or success
1
3.9
Wanting too much food and eating more than needed
1
7.8
A habit of eating too much in a greedy way
1
7.7
Very strong hunger that makes you want to eat a lot
A very strong desire to eat too much
A very greedy way of eating a lot of food
A very strong wish to eat and drink a lot
A very strong feeling that makes someone eat a lot of food
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
porkish + appetite
The phrase can be partially decoded by morphological cues: a learner who recognises 'pork' and the derivational suffix '-ish' can infer 'pork-like' → pig-like or gluttonous, and combined with 'appetite' yields a sense of a greedy or very large appetite. However, 'porkish' is rare/nonce and the cultural association between pigs/pork and gluttony is metaphorical and not fully predictable for B1 learners, so the meaning is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The phrase porkish appetite may come from comparing a person to a pig: pork comes from pigs, and pigs often eat a lot. That's why porkish appetite describes a 'very large or greedy appetite'.