Ravening

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.

O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

[…] then, when sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have sufficiently indulged his meditations with what King he shall next glut his ravening maw […]

“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat—“canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day? […]”

After an hour or so the veil lifted and discovered beneath it fifty horsemen, ravening lions to the sight, in steel armour dight. We observed them straightly, and lo! they were cutters-off of the highway, wild as wild Arabs.

To be the strongers rauening pray the weaker did begin, And might went for oppressed right […]