earth hungern.

a1661 S. Rutherford Cruel Watchmen (1728) 21 The spiritual particular Mark in this Sickness..is a Hunger for Christ, and a speaking Earth-hunger, an Hunger that hath Hands and Feet; and it is the only chief Token of Life.

1822 W. Scott Fortunes of Nigel I. ix. 248 If he has such an eard hunger, wouns! man, we'll stuff his stomach with English land.

1856 R. W. Emerson Eng. Traits vii. 122 The earth-hunger, or preference for property in land, which is said to mark the Teutonic nations.

1884 Graphic 4 Oct. 342/2 The Boers..whose earth hunger is notorious, will gradually ‘eat-up’ all the surrounding territories.

1919 Times 28 Oct. 8/3 Will she [sc. Great Britain] not liberate Turkey proper, Thrace, and Constantinople from the greed and earth-hunger of others?

1962 Hist. Jrnl. 5 47 So far from being marked by ‘earth hunger’ and the lust for limitless expansion, the imperialist attitude is now regarded as primarily a defensive one.

2003 M. Golay Tide of Empire 330 Their unappeasable earth hunger led the Americans into the remote Idaho recesses of the Nez Perces.

1857 H. Mead Sepoy Revolt Pref. p. iii There is a malady common to savages in certain parts of the world, which is termed ‘earth-hunger’. it produces an incessant craving for clay, a species of food which fails to satisfy the appetite.

1903 C. W. Stiles Rep. Prevalence Hookworm Dis. 76 26 per cent of his patients confessed to eating earth, and he refers to ‘earth hunger’ as sometimes the cause and sometimes the effect of hookworm disease.