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Ravening is an old, literary word for animals — especially wolves — that are desperately hungry and ready to hunt and tear. A ravening beast is not just hungry; it is dangerous with hunger. You will meet it in stories, sermons, and set phrases like ravening wolves, a very old picture of greedy, threatening people. It is not a word for I skipped lunch. Though actually, it has nothing to do with the black bird called a raven, even though the spelling looks the same. Everyday English would say ravenous for very hungry, and leave ravening to books.
飢餓凶猛的（書面，多形容急著捕食的野獸）
組成The -ing form of the obsolete verb raven, to prey (to hunt and eat). Not from the bird raven.
同家族的字
- ravenoussame old verb raven, to hunt and eat; not the black bird
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
raveningadj/ˈɹævənɪŋ/
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Voracious and greedy.
- There is no shortage of ravening friends and relatives on the day one hits the lottery.
- 1555, Richard Eden (translator), The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India by Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, London: Edward Sutton, Decade 3, Book 5, p. 116, They eate mans fleshe but seldome, bycause they meete not oftentymes with strangiers, except they goo foorth of theyr owne dominions with a mayne army of purpose to hunt for men, when theyr rauenynge appetite pricketh them forwarde.
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archaicSubject to the voracity of a predator.
- To be the strongers rauening pray the weaker did begin, And might went for oppressed right […]
- Away with him into the open fields, To be a rauening pray to Crowes and Kites:
raveningnoun/ˈɹævənɪŋ/
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archaicliteraryPredation (by an animal); voracious eating or consumption.
- Some rather deuoure than eate their meate non other wyse than suche as be ledde in to prison. This rauenyng and deuourynge is appropred to theues.
- Consider whether the lusty person were in foretyme geuen to moche drynkyng, eatyng and rauenyng, tomoch ease, to no exercise or bathinges in his helth, or no.
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Eagerness for plunder; rapacity; extortion.
- We must kyll diuelish pryde, furious angre, insatiable couetousnes, filthy lucre, stinking lechery, deadly hatred & malice, foxy wilines, woluish rauening & deuouring, and al other vnreasonable lustes and desires of the fleshe.
- And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。