starve

Verb

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

1. (intransitive) To die because of lack of food or of not eating.
   • During the Cultural Revolution I was exiled to Xincai County in Henan Province. There, 36 percent of the people starved to death in the early 1960s.1990, Chen Yizi (陳一諮), quotee, Children of the Dragon: The Story of Tiananmen Square, →ISBN, page 48
   • "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
2. (intransitive) To suffer severely because of lack of food or of not eating.
   • Ah (ſaid the Ape as ſighing vvondrous ſad) / Its an hard caſe, vvhen men of good deſeruing / Muſt either driuen be perforce to ſteruing, / Or asked for their pas by euerie ſquib: […]1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale.”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC
   • ..., and the little half-starved, stunted girl of twelve, with her brown arms and steady, unerring aim, will hammer out half a bundle, IS. 6½d.1884, Jacob Schoenhof, The Destructive Influence of the Tariff Upon Manufacture and Commerce and the Figures and Facts Relating Thereto, page 62
3. (intransitive) To be very hungry.
   • I was starving so I wrote S.O.S. on the desert island using rocks.
4. (transitive) To kill or attempt to kill by depriving of food.
5. (transitive) To make suffer severely by depriving of food.

   Synonyms:

   famish

6. (transitive) To force a combatant to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in a targeted siege.
   • If they refuse to surrender the garrison, we'll just starve them out.
7. (dated, transitive) To force a population center to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in sieges in international armed conflicts.
   • Some historians have since classified the Siege of Leningrad as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
8. (transitive) To deprive of nourishment or of some vital component.
   • The uncaring parents starved the child of love.
   • The patient’s brain was starved of oxygen.
9. (intransitive) To deteriorate for want of any essential thing.
10. (UK, transitive, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire) To kill with cold; to (cause to) die from cold.
    • I was half starved waiting out in that wind.
    • Wheniver he wor starved, he used to get th' seck o' coils ov his back, an' walk raand th' haase till he gat warm agean.1869 February, John Hartley, The original illuminated clock almanack
11. (intransitive, obsolete) To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.
    • Seuen moneths he ſo her kept in bitter ſmart, / Becauſe his ſinfull luſt ſhe would not ſerue, / Vntill ſuch time as noble Britomart / Releaſed her, that elſe was like to ſterue / Through cruell knife that her deare heart did kerue.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 4, page 6