to starve
328
1.7
- verb
- /stɑrv/
:
morir de hambre
- During the harsh winter, families struggled to find food and began to starve.
- starve to death
- starving people
- starving beggars
I was ordering food and I was starving, starving, hungry.
- I was ordering food and I was starving, starving, hungry.
- I mean, they're, they're starving and they keep fighting.
- And the people are starving under the revolt.
- They were, he said, dogs that would sooner starve than snap meat from a stranger's hand.
- And so that can't happen if if you're starving to death, if you've lost too much weight.
- The children are starving, entire places are being devastated.
- If you're selling burgers, you need a starving crowd.
Examples
-
Today, in the Third World, a child starves to death every three seconds.
Academic text (1994) -
And the people are starving under the revolt.
-
And I know that people starve to death still today.
-
A whole week, he could starve to death.
-
So they have only two choices, to stay and starve or to leave.
-
Here they were left to starve in full view of both armies.
-
There were times when I really thought we'd starve, but we never did.
Fiction book (1991) -
You're worried about your people starving in the cold and the dark.
-
I've been starving for six years.
-
In lean years, they starved and often had to stay in bed to keep warm.
Academic text (1995)
Synonyms
15
9.2
To become very weak because you have no food
4
1.2
To feel a strong need to eat
To be very hungry because you have no food
Antonyms
How Well
88
3.7
241
3.2
∞
2.7
345
1.9
10
5.1
328
1.7
Surface Forms
Etymology
Starve comes from an old English word steorfan that meant 'to die'. So the idea of dying became linked to not having food, which is why starve means to suffer or die from not having enough food.