Library / English Dictionary

CRAVE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Plead or ask for earnestly

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "crave" is one way to...):

beg; implore; pray (call upon in supplication; entreat)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Have a craving, appetite, or great desire for

Synonyms:

crave; hunger; lust; starve; thirst

Classified under:

Verbs of eating and drinking

Hypernyms (to "crave" is one way to...):

desire; want (feel or have a desire for; want strongly)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s PP

Sentence example:

They crave more bread

Derivation:

craving (an intense desire for some particular thing)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Some consumers crave tastier tomatoes than those available at the supermarket.

(Scientists develop genetic path to tastier tomatoes, NSF)

These antibodies may help keep nicotine from reaching the brain, which can help reduce a person’s craving for nicotine.

(Nicotine vaccine, NCI Dictionary)

But my curiosity will be past its appetite; it craves food now.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Especially during his stretches of famine he suffered from lack of the weed; but no matter how often he mastered the craving, it remained with him as strong as ever.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out; then I shall know more.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

She said that as humans evolved, they ate a diet rich in potassium, but low in sodium, leading us to crave sodium, not potassium.

(Study: Fruits and Vegetables Can Lower Blood Pressure, VOA)

He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The full moon, November 12, will have you craving rest and withdrawing from the social scene over this weekend.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

A chronic disease in which a person craves drinks that contain alcohol and is unable to control his or her drinking.

(Alcohol dependence, NCI Dictionary)

Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes.

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