STARVE

starve, famish

(verb) die of food deprivation; “The political prisoners starved to death”; “Many famished in the countryside during the drought”

starve, famish

(verb) deprive of food; “They starved the prisoners”

starve

(verb) deprive of a necessity and cause suffering; “he is starving her of love”; “The engine was starved of fuel”

starve, hunger, famish

(verb) be hungry; go without food; “Let’s eat--I’m starving!”

crave, hunger, thirst, starve, lust

(verb) have a craving, appetite, or great desire for

Source: WordNet® 3.1

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Etymology

Verb

starve (third-person singular simple present starves, present participle starving, simple past (obsolete) starf or (obsolete) storve or starved, past participle (obsolete) storven or starved)

(intransitive, obsolete) To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.

(intransitive) To die because of lack of food or of not eating.

(intransitive) To be very hungry.

(transitive) To destroy, make capitulate or at least make suffer by deprivation, notably of food.

(transitive) To deprive of nourishment or of some vital component.

(intransitive) To deteriorate for want of any essential thing.

(transitive, British, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire) To kill with cold.

Anagrams

• averts, ravest, tarves, traves, vaster, versta

Source: Wiktionary

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Starve, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Starved; p. pr. & vb. n. Starving.] Etym: [OE. sterven to die, AS. steorfan; akin to D. sterven, G. sterben, OHG. sterban, Icel. starf labor, toil.]

1. To die; to perish. [Obs., except in the sense of perishing with cold or hunger.] Lydgate. In hot coals he hath himself raked . . . Thus starved this worthy mighty Hercules. Chaucer.

2. To perish with hunger; to suffer extreme hunger or want; to be very indigent. Sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed. Pope.

3. To perish or die with cold. Spenser. Have I seen the naked starve for cold Sandys. Starving with cold as well as hunger. W. Irving.

Note: In this sense, still common in England, but rarely used of the United States.

Starve, v. t.

1. To destroy with cold. [Eng.] From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth. Milton.

2. To kill with hunger; as, maliciously to starve a man is, in law, murder.

3. To distress or subdue by famine; as, to starvea garrison into a surrender. Attalus endeavored to starve Italy by stopping their convoy of provisions from Africa. Arbuthnot.

4. To destroy by want of any kind; as, to starve plans by depriving them of proper light and air.

5. To deprive of force or vigor; to disable. The pens of historians, writing thereof, seemed starved for matter in an age so fruitful of memorable actions. Fuller. The powers of their minds are starved by disuse. Locke.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition

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