starvation
Americannoun
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of starvation
Explanation
Starvation is what happens if you don’t eat for days or weeks and your body starts to shut down. Extreme poverty, drought and other dire circumstances can contribute to starvation. Starvation can be the result of war or famine, leading to the deaths of large numbers of people. Any organism that depends on food for energy is at risk of starvation when there isn't enough to eat. Starvation is thought by some to have entered the language in 1775 during the American Revolution, when a member of the British Parliament suggested starvation as a way to make the American rebels submit.
Vocabulary lists containing starvation
Africa - Middle School
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Africa - High School
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Part 2 Vocabulary (Unit 1)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Starvation in Gaza today summons up my grandmother’s stories of how her family starved to death in the Warsaw ghetto.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 15, 2025
"Starvation was the worst thing… you eat the crumbs on the carpet," he says.
From BBC • Oct. 3, 2025
She cites the famous World War II study by Ancel Keys, known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, in which 36 healthy young adult men voluntarily lost 25 percent of their body weight.
From Slate • May 15, 2023
Ancel Keys, author of the well known Minnesota Starvation Experiment which took place in the 1940s, had his study participants complete food diaries.
From Salon • Jan. 1, 2023
Starvation would force me to come to the house or the store.
From "Z for Zachariah" by Robert C. O’Brien
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
