starve

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To die or suffer badly because of a lack of food.

   Many people starved to death during the long winter.

2. 2
   verb

   To be very hungry.

   Let's eat soon, I'm absolutely starving.

3. 3
   verb

   To deliberately deprive someone or something of food or of something it needs.

   They starved the prisoners until they surrendered.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Starve comes from Old English and originally meant simply to die, especially a lingering death caused by hunger, cold, disease, or grief. It probably derives from an ancient Germanic base meaning to be rigid, and only later became chiefly associated with death or suffering from lack of food.

From Middle English sterven (“to die, perish”), from Old English steorfan (“to die, perish”), from Proto-West Germanic *sterban, from Proto-Germanic *sterbaną (“to become stiff, die”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)terp- (“to lose strength, become numb, be motionless”); or from Proto-Indo-European *sterbʰ- (“to become stiff”), from *ster- (“stiff”); or a conflation of the aforementioned. Cognate with Scots stairve, sterve (“to die, perish, starve”), Saterland Frisian stjerwa (“to die”), West Frisian stjerre (“to die”), Dutch sterven (“to die”), German Low German starven (“to die”), German sterb…

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