Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Voracity; rapaciousness.
  • noun Something taken as prey.
  • noun The act or practice of preying.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • See raven.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • verb See raven, v. t. & i.
  • adjective obsolete Ravenous.
  • noun Food obtained by violence; plunder; prey; raven.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete ravenous

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English ravin, raven, from Old French ravine, rapine, from Latin rapīna, from rapere, to seize; see rep- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • With tender hours and tempering dew to cure

    The hunger and thirst of day’s distemperature

    And ravin of the dry discolouring hours,

    —Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse

    The word is cognate with 'rapine', but I'm not sure of the exact sense here: rapine; or voracity; or plunder.

    July 15, 2008