hunger strike
29
3.2
- noun
- /ˈhʌŋɡər straɪk/
:
huelga de hambre
- Country club prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, entered the third day of a hunger strike, protesting the suspension of privileges by prison authorities.
- go on a hunger strike
- hunger strike in protest
- end the hunger strike
The closest they've come to it is we did a hunger strike for voting reform earlier this year.
- The closest they've come to it is we did a hunger strike for voting reform earlier this year.
- So yeah, the hunger strike is centrically linked to the blanket protest.
- And they did a month long hunger strike that resulted in a ton of them going to hospital.
- Went on a hunger strike when the meal trace kept arriving with the food still frozen.
- But you can go on a hunger strike as long as you have water for months because you're going to eat up all your energy reserves.
Examples
-
Citizens have sued and gone on hunger strikes.
Academic text (1993) -
On 23 January 1989, twenty detainees at Diepkloof Prison went on hunger strike, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees.
Academic text (1990) -
You go on hunger strike.
-
I only found out later from our guide that they were on hunger strike.
Blog text (26) -
The princess is on a hunger strike.
-
Mr G, why are you on hunger strike?
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When she did her hunger strike for birth control, we rallied in her support.
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Two of their number are now on their third day of hunger strike, drinking only liquids for three days.
Blog text (10) -
A number of female political prisoners have launched a hunger strike protesting...
Blog text (23) -
The men from India have been on a hunger strike while seeking asylum.
Antonyms
How Extreme
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a voluntary refusal to eat as protest' is directly derivable from combining 'hunger' (lack of food/need to eat) with 'strike' (a deliberate refusal/protest), so a learner who knows both words can infer the sense. The compositional pattern (X strike = protest by X) is common cross-linguistically (e.g. huelga de hambre, grève de la faim), supporting immediate comprehension.
Etymology
Hunger strike comes from the literal idea of hunger, meaning not eating, plus strike, meaning to stop doing something, like workers refusing to work. People who do a hunger strike stop eating to protest, so the phrase means 'a refusal to eat as a form of protest'.