athirst

Old English ofþyrst, past participle of ofþyrstan (“to smart from thirst”), equivalent to a- (“of”, Etymology 8) +‎ thirst (verb).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈθəːst/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)st

athirst (comparative more athirst, superlative most athirst)

1. (archaic) Thirsty.
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Revelation 21:6,

     I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

   • 1849, Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter 10,

     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 […]

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 1,

     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.

2. (figuratively) Eager or extremely desirous (for something).
   • 1817, John Keats, “Sonnet (Written on a blank space at the end of Chaucer’s tale of ‘The Floure And The Leafe’”

     I, that forever feel athirst for glory,

     Could at this moment be content to lie

     Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings

     Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

   • 1878, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Ave Atque Vale (In Memory of Charles Baudelaire)” in Poems and Ballads, Second Series, Stanza IV,

     O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,

     That were athirst for sleep and no more life

     And no more love, for peace and no more strife!

   • 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, translated from the Bengali by the author, 5,

     I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.

     My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.

• ratshit, rattish, tartish, tirthas