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🥺 To be very hungry 🍽️ To deny food 🤤 To crave strongly ⚠️ To deny something needed
to starve

to starve

68 4.3
To want something very much because you do not have it
  • verb
  • /stɑrv/
  • Informal
translation icon : morirse por
  • You know, you could be in the greatest neighborhood in the world and you could be starving for things.

I think because people are so starving for content, it's why so many of my projects came out.

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Examples

  • Yet inside, I was starving, starving for love and life.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • He's like starved for attention all the time.

  • I think because people are so starving for content, it's why so many of my projects came out.

    Film Courage

  • If quality time is your love language, you will often be starving again.

  • And I think again, people were hungry, people were starving for something that is effective.

  • What I realized that day was people are starving for something authentic.

  • By his account, the people whom he met were starving for intimacy.

    Academic text (2000)

  • No wonder I've been starved for sleep ever since I got here.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • At once, he was assaulted with so many smells that his starving body could barely assimilate them all.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • People are starving for good stories that inspire them.

Synonyms

to die
vsto starve
  • Informal
598 7.9

To want something very much

is more neutral and standard rather than an informal expression
to crave
vsto starve
103 3.8

To want something very much

is mainly used figuratively rather than for literal need
to lust
vsto starve
  • NSFW
30 6.3

To want something very strongly, often something forbidden

is a general intense desire without the forbidden or sexual connotation
to hunger
vsto starve
11 3.9

To want something very much, often food or success

is mainly figurative craving rather than physical need or achievements
to thirst
vsto starve
8 5.2

To have a strong wish for something

is stronger and more urgent than this kind of yearning

Antonyms

to satisfy
172 2.0

Make someone happy by meeting their need or wish

to quench
16 4.2

To stop thirst by drinking or to put out a fire by cooling it

How Eager

to starve
  • Informal
68 4.3
to yearn
92 4.9
to long
114 4.5

Surface Forms

starve infinitive
starved past
starved past participle
starving present participle
starves third person singular

Etymology

A helpful way to remember starve is to know it comes from an old English word steorfan meaning 'to die', so when people say they are 'starving' for a break or for attention they mean they very strongly need it, almost as if they could 'die' without it.