Gorehungry

Gorehungry is an informal adjective used to describe a person or audience with a pronounced appetite for graphic violence or gore in media. It can apply to characters who seek out brutal scenes, to critics who discuss an ongoing escalation of violence in a work, or to viewers and players who respond to a piece of horror with a craving for increasingly intense gore. The term is typically descriptive rather than prescriptive and often carries a colloquial or pejorative nuance depending on context.

Etymology and relation to related terms: Gorehungry is a neologism formed by combining gore with hungry. It is most commonly encountered in online discussions about horror, splatter cinema, and violence in games or comics. It is related to the noun gorehound, which denotes a fan of gore, but gorehungry emphasizes active craving or desire for more graphic content rather than mere appreciation.

Usage notes: Because it connotes a strong appetite for violence, gorehungry can be used to critique sensationalism or transgressive storytelling when the depiction of gore seems gratuitous. In neutral analysis it can also serve as a shorthand description of a character’s or audience’s attitude within a study of genre conventions. The term remains informal and is less likely to appear in formal scholarly writing without definition.