starve

Verb

Verb Forms: starved, starving, starves

To suffer or die from lack of food.
be hungry; go without food
die of food deprivation
- "The political prisoners starved to death"
deprive of food
- "They starved the prisoners"
have a craving, appetite, or great desire for
deprive of a necessity and cause suffering
- "The engine was starved of fuel"
To die because of lack of food or of not eating.
To suffer severely because of lack of food or of not eating.
To be very hungry.
To kill or attempt to kill by depriving of food.
To make suffer severely by depriving of food.
To force a combatant to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in a targeted siege.
To force a population center to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in sieges in international armed conflicts.
To deprive of nourishment or of some vital component.
To deteriorate for want of any essential thing.
To kill with cold; to (cause to) die from cold.
To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.

Examples

'The patient's brain was starved of oxygen.
He tried to starve his opponent of good letters by blocking key spots on the Scrabble board.
I was half starved waiting out in that wind.
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.
Some historians have since classified the Siege of Leningrad as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
The uncaring parents starved the child of love.

Origin / 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”).

Synonyms

crave, famish, hunger, lust, thirst

Antonyms

be full, feed

Scrabble Score: 9

starve: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
starve: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
starve: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 10

starve: valid Words With Friends Word