starve
/stɑɹv/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.52 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To force a combatant to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in a targeted siege.
Transitive verb
verb
To force a population center to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in sieges in international armed conflicts.
Dated; Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "During the Cultural Revolution I was exiled to Xincai County in Henan Province. There, 36 percent of the people starved to death in the early 1960s."
- ""When all of you starve to death, Shasta, don't come crying to me, that's all.""
- "Ah (ſaid the Ape as ſighing vvondrous ſad) / Its an hard caſe, vvhen men of good deſeruing / Muſt either driuen be perforce to ſteruing, / Or asked for their pas by euerie ſquib: […]"
- "..., and the little half-starved, stunted girl of twelve, with her brown arms and steady, unerring aim, will hammer out half a bundle, IS. 6½d."
- "I was starving so I wrote S.O.S. on the desert island using rocks."
- "If they refuse to surrender the garrison, we'll just starve them out."
Etymology
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 sterben (“to die”), Icelandic stirfinn (“peevish, froward”), Albanian shterp (“sterile, unproductive, barren land”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /stɑɹv/
- British English: /stɑːv/
Usage
Inflected Forms
starves (present, singular)
starving (participle, present)
starved (past)
starved (participle, past)
starven (obsolete, participle)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
starved (first person, past)
starvest (archaic, present)
starved (past, second person)
starvedst (archaic, past)
starveth (archaic, present)