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View synonyms for starve

starve

[ stahrv ]

verb (used without object)

, starved, starv·ing.
  1. to die or perish from lack of food or nourishment.
  2. to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger.
  3. to suffer from extreme poverty and need.
  4. to feel a strong need or desire:

    The child was starving for affection.

  5. Chiefly British Dialect. to perish or suffer extremely from cold.
  6. Obsolete. to die.


verb (used with object)

, starved, starv·ing.
  1. to cause to starve; kill, weaken, or reduce by lack of food.
  2. to subdue, or force to some condition or action, by hunger:

    to starve a besieged garrison into a surrender.

  3. to cause to suffer for lack of something needed or craved.
  4. Chiefly British Dialect. to cause to perish, or to suffer extremely, from cold.

starve

/ stɑːv /

verb

  1. to die or cause to die from lack of food
  2. to deprive (a person or animal) or (of a person, etc) to be deprived of food
  3. informal.
    intr to be very hungry
  4. foll byof or for to deprive or be deprived (of something necessary), esp so as to cause suffering or malfunctioning

    the engine was starved of fuel

  5. trfoll byinto to bring (to) a specified condition by starving

    to starve someone into submission

  6. archaic.
    to be or cause to be extremely cold


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Derived Forms

  • ˈstarver, noun

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Other Words From

  • half-starved adjective
  • half-starving adjective
  • self-starved adjective
  • un·starved adjective

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Word History and Origins

Origin of starve1

First recorded before 1000; Middle English sterven, Old English steorfan “to die”; cognate with German sterben

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Word History and Origins

Origin of starve1

Old English steorfan to die; related to Old Frisian sterva to die, Old High German sterban to die

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Synonym Study

See hungry.

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Example Sentences

The sanctions will further starve Huawei of critical semiconductors.

From Fortune

The troubling issue is Google’s huge share of all online ad revenue, starving all kinds of other publishers and site owners and crushing the news business.

From Fortune

Previous actions had already restricted Huawei’s access to semiconductors, but the new order aims to further starve Huawei of chips by eliminating work-arounds that allowed it to buy chips designed by third parties.

From Fortune

Consequently, our sky is not uniformly bright to our eyes, and most of the cosmos is photon-starved compared to our everyday circumstances.

While researchers try to outdo one another on contrived benchmarks, one in every nine people in the world is starving.

Is it worse to let your family starve or profit off the carnage?

Still, the man did starve himself in the name of a same-sex marriage ban and it, unsurprisingly, earned him a lot of backlash.

This can explain why people who starve themselves can only lose minimal amounts of weight.

He had wanted me to go into insurance, sure I would starve as an artist.

In our surreal rebirth, it makes sense that as newsrooms starve elsewhere, New Orleans has a newspaper war.

If we set him adrift the poor child would starve—unless the cat got him.

Not so much, either; 'cause a chicken will stir round an' scratch a livin' out the ground, sooner 'n starve.

I have seen examples of such being freed, that is, turned out of doors to starve.

Here, as in the former instance, the last syllables rhyme correctly, and the objection is confined to starve and deserve.

They would starve on the skin of the Scotch men and are too well-mannered to attack that of the Scotch ladies.

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starvation wagesstarveling