FAMISHING

Verb

famishing

present participle of famish

Source: Wiktionary


FAMISH

Fam"ish, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Famished; p. pr. & vb. n. Famishing.] Etym: [OE. famen; cf. OF. afamer, L. fames. See Famine, and cf. Affamish.]

1. To starve, kill, or destroy with hunger. Shak.

2. To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to distress with hanger. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Cen. xli. 55. The pains of famished Tantalus he'll feel. Dryden.

3. To kill, or to cause to suffer extremity, by deprivation or denial of anything necessary. And famish him of breath, if not of bread. Milton.

4. To force or constrain by famine. He had famished Paris into a surrender. Burke.

Fam"ish, v. i.

1. To die of hunger; to starve.

2. To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to come near to perish. You are all resolved rather to die than to famish Shak.

3. To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish. Prov. x. 3.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

19 April 2025

CATCH

(verb) grasp with the mind or develop an understanding of; “did you catch that allusion?”; “We caught something of his theory in the lecture”; “don’t catch your meaning”; “did you get it?”; “She didn’t get the joke”; “I just don’t get him”


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Coffee Trivia

The Boston Tea Party helped popularize coffee in America. The hefty tea tax imposed on the colonies in 1773 resulted in America switching from tea to coffee. In the lead up to the Revolutionary War, it became patriotic to sip java instead of tea. The Civil War made the drink more pervasive. Coffee helped energize tired troops, and drinking it became an expression of freedom.

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