starve
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Middle English sterven, from Old English steorfan. Cognate with Low German staarven, Dutch sterven, German sterben.
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Verb
starve (third-person singular simple present starves, present participle starving, simple past starved, past participle starved or rarely storven)
- (intransitive, obsolete) To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.i.4:
- noble Britomart / Released her, that else was like to sterue, / Through cruell knife that her deare heart did kerue.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.i.4:
- (intransitive) To die because of lack of food or of not eating.
- 2007, Lisa Wingate, A Thousand Voices, page 76:
- "When all of you starve to death, Shasta, don't come crying to me, that's all."
- 2007, Lisa Wingate, A Thousand Voices, page 76:
- (intransitive) To be very hungry.
- Hey, ma, I'm starving!
- (transitive) To destroy, make capitulate or at least make suffer by deprivation, notably of food
- (transitive) To deprive of nourishment.
- They starved the child until it withered away.
- (transitive, UK, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire) To kill with cold.
- I was half starved waiting out in that wind.
[edit] Translations
to die because of lack of food
to be very hungry
to destroy by deprivation
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to deprive of nourishment
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