Veracious vs. Voracious

How to use "veracious" and "voracious" correctly

This is an entry on my list of Common Errors in English Usage. Visit the main page for direct links to additional entries.

Veracious means “truthful”—it shares the root ver with words like verify and verdict. In everyday English, you’re more likely to come across voracious, which means “extremely hungry; ravenous or insatiable” in both a literal and a figurative sense:

veracious claims supported by evidence

a voracious predator
a voracious reader

Related Resources

Common Errors in English Usage: Errors in diction and idiom commonly made by native speakers of English

List of Common Errors in English Usage (PDF): Printable version of the complete list

Common Grammar Errors: A list of common errors in grammar (topics like subject-verb agreement and parallelism) as distinct from usage

List of Common Errors in English Usage: PDF version