starve the beast
starve the beast verb: to progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition.
Verb
starve the beast (third-person singular simple present starves the beast, present participle starving the beast, simple past and past participle starved the beast)
- To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition.
- To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending.
- Whatever the mechanism, attempts to starve the beast through revenue shortages somehow seem to make the beast all the more voracious.2010 February 22, Catherine Rampell, “A New Social Contract, but Which One?”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Oct 2021
Forms of starve the beast
| third-person singular present | starves the beast |
|---|---|
| present participle | starving the beast |
| past participle | starved the beast |
| past | starved the beast |
Origin of starve the beast
According to Bruce Bartlett, the second sense was first used by an anonymous Reagan staffer in “We didn’t starve the beast. It’s still eating quite well—by feeding off future generations.”
Questions about starve the beast
- What does starve the beast mean?
- Starve the beast means to progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition.
- What part of speech is starve the beast?
- Starve the beast is a verb.
- What is the past tense of starve the beast?
- The past tense of starve the beast is starved the beast.
Words near starve the beast in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: starve the beast (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “starve the beast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/starve_the_beast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.