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thirsty

adjectivenouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈθɜːs.ti//
  • United States//ˈθɝs.ti//

Needing to drink water or any liquid that can supply water.

adjective

  1. 1

    Needing to drink water or any liquid that can supply water.

    After all that work in the hot sun, I am really thirsty.

    Then Egil said, ‘That happens if you eat dulse, it makes you even thirstier.’

  2. 2

    Craving alcohol; especially, experiencing some alcohol withdrawal.

    After all that work on a stupidly maintained spreadsheet, I am really thirsty.

    Q: What's with John today? He seems off his game. A: He's pretty thirsty, I think.

  3. 3

    informalCausing thirst; giving one a need to drink.

    Marching is thirsty work.

    I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty.

    Invest in a water bottle: cycling can be thirsty work.

  4. 4

    figurativeCraving something immaterial.

    thirsty for knowledge

    thirsty for attention

    After the president left office, the nation was thirsty for change.

  5. 5

    figurativeCraving something immaterial. Craving or desiring sex.

    This is the third time that girl brought up her crush. She must really be thirsty for him.

    The relentless thrill of “Do You Want to Come Over?” is not the only time Britney Spears’s new album Glory makes you feel like you’re being hit on via thirsty text message.

    Nin was reviled throughout her life and afterward for writing candidly about her desires — something few women are allowed to do without being branded an open wound — and was only recently divested of her status as one of the thirstiest women of the 20th century.

Etymology

From Middle English thirsty, from Old English þurstiġ, from Proto-West Germanic *þurstug. Equivalent to thirst + -y. Cognate with Dutch dorstig, German durstig.

noun

  1. 1

    One who is thirsty (for a drink, sex, alcohol, etc.).

    The most interesting thing to the "chicken fanciers"—and the thirsty also—was an ice cream parlor in Morrison. Before we left […] the town ran short on all brands of beer (near, Root, etc.), and the thirsties of the crowd were reduced to the tamer pastime of eating oranges and cracking peanuts.

    A thirsty looking for a draught of water finds a welcome sea of water.

    Another way to limit the use of thirsty plants […] Here small beds of flowers, azaleas, and other "thirsties" could be grown satisfactorily.

    You are like a stream of water to a thirsty in a desert.

  2. 2

    Thirst.

    There is a thirsty that is not for the belly. There is a thirsty for land that belong to we."

    The captain would have to spend all his fortune trying to quench the Dark tenant's thirsty. A thirsty that has spanned thousands of years and never been quenched. Provide for his lusts!

    Afterwards Marguerite declared herself super-hungry, and also thirsty. 'Not super-thirsty, Regular thirsty. Let's say a thirsty that has worked out, learned martial arts and designed its own bat-suit. But definitely super-hunggry.

Forms

plural
thirsties
comparative
thirstier
superlative
thirstiest
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).