Think of a mouth that swallows and swallows and is still open. The plate , and the hunger has not moved. Voracious is about the size of that hunger, not about bad manners — and once you can see the mouth, it is easy to see why English lets it swallow books, facts and news as well as food.

voracious 可以想成一張吞個不停的嘴:盤子空了,嘴還張著,那股餓意一點都沒少。這個字量的是「餓的規模」,不是吃相難不難看。畫面一旦看清楚,就不難理解為什麼英文後來讓這張嘴也去吞書、吞知識、吞消息。

From the word’s history

Voracious comes from Latin vorax, formed on the verb voro, meaning to swallow up, with the English ending -acious added.

voracious 來自拉丁文 vorāx(會吞的),再加上英文字尾 -acious;而 vorāx 又是從動詞 vorō「吞下去」長出來的。所以「吞」這個動作從一開始就寫在字裡,不是後來才附加上去的想像。

Wiktionary etymology for voracious: "From Latin vorāx + English -acious", with the tree Latin vorō > vorāx (kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:770042048)

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