Thirst is the need or craving for a drink. Quench your thirst, a raging thirst, a thirst for knowledge.
It is a late signal, since by the time you feel thirst you are already short of water, which is why athletes drink to a schedule. The figurative use, a thirst for something, is as old as the word itself.
1nounthirstThe need or craving for a drink.
“After the long walk in the heat, we stopped at a café to quench our thirst.”
thirst is a need.
Old English thurst comes from a Germanic root meaning dry.
Middle English
thirst
English, today
thirst
From Middle English thirst. From Middle English thirst,thurst, from Old English þurst, from Proto-West Germanic þurstu, from Proto-Germanic þurstuz, from Proto-Indo-European ters- (“dry”). Germanic cognates include Old High German thurst, Middle High German durst, German Durst, Old Saxon thurst, Old Dutch thursti, Middle Dutch dorst, dorste, Dutch dorst, Old Norse þorsti (Swedish törst, Icelandic þorsti, Faroese tosti, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål tørst, Norwegian Nynorsk tørste). Indo-European cognates include Ancient Greek τέρσομαι, Albanian djersë (“sweat”), Sanskrit तृष्णा (“desire; thirst”), Sanskrit तृष्यति, Latin terra, Latin torridus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA