Word Direct Answers

What does "starve" mean?

Starve: To perish with hunger; to suffer extreme hunger or want; to be very indigent. Sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed. Pope.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To perish or die with cold. Spenser. Have I seen the naked starve for cold Sandys. Starving with cold as well as hunger. W. Irving. Note: In this sense, still common in England, but rarely used of the United States.
  2. 3.To destroy with cold. [Eng.] From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth. Milton.
  3. 4.To kill with hunger; as, maliciously to starve a man is, in law, murder.
  4. 5.To distress or subdue by famine; as, to starvea garrison into a surrender. Attalus endeavored to starve Italy by stopping their convoy of provisions from Africa. Arbuthnot.
  5. 6.To destroy by want of any kind; as, to starve plans by depriving them of proper light and air.
  6. 7.To deprive of force or vigor; to disable. The pens of historians, writing thereof, seemed starved for matter in an age so fruitful of memorable actions. Fuller. The powers of their minds are starved by disuse. Locke.

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