starven

English

Etymology

With analogical adjustment of stem vowel, from Middle English storven (“dead from lack of food or warmth”), from Old English storfen (“dead”), from Proto-Germanic *sturbanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *sterbaną (“to die”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈstɑːvən/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈstɑɹvən/

Verb

starven

1. (obsolete) past participle of starve

Adjective

starven

1. (archaic) starved
   • 1898, Neil Munro, John Splendid‎^[1]:

     CHAPTER XXI.--SEVEN BROKEN MEN. At last there was but one horseman in chase of the six men who were fleeing without a look behind them--a frenzied blackavised trooper on a short-legged garron he rode most clumsily, with arms that swung like wings from the shoulders, his boots keeping time to the canter with grotesque knockings against the gaunt and sweating flanks of his starven animal.

   • 1901, Various, Successful Recitations‎^[2]:

     So Mr. King, as assistant surgeon, Bandaged, and dosed, and nursed, and dressed, And worked, as he ate and drank, with zest, Until he began to blossom and burgeon To redness of features and fulness of cheek, And his starven hands grew plump and sleek.

   • 1920, John Freeman, Poems New and Old‎^[3]:

     Sooner the Heavenly Powers would let them lie Eternally unrising 'neath a sky Arctic and lonely, where death's starven wind Raged full-delighted:--sooner would those kind Serenities man's generation cast Back into nothingness, than heaven should waste With finite anguish infinitely prolonged Until the Eternal Spring were stained and wronged.

Anagrams

• servant, taverns, versant