Synonyms

starve

American

[stahrv] / stɑrv /

verb (used without object)

to die or perish from lack of food or nourishment.
to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger.
to suffer from extreme poverty and need.
to feel a strong need or desire.

The child was starving for affection.
Chiefly British Dialect. to perish or suffer extremely from cold.
Obsolete. to die.

verb (used with object)

to cause to starve; kill, weaken, or reduce by lack of food.
to subdue, or force to some condition or action, by hunger.

to starve a besieged garrison into a surrender.
to cause to suffer for lack of something needed or craved.
Chiefly British Dialect. to cause to perish, or to suffer extremely, from cold.

starve British

/ stɑːv /

verb

to die or cause to die from lack of food
to deprive (a person or animal) or (of a person, etc) to be deprived of food
informal (intr) to be very hungry
to deprive or be deprived (of something necessary), esp so as to cause suffering or malfunctioning

the engine was starved of fuel
to bring (to) a specified condition by starving

to starve someone into submission
archaic to be or cause to be extremely cold

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Synonym Usage

See hungry.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of starve

First recorded before 1000; Middle English sterven, Old English steorfan “to die”; cognate with German sterben

Explanation

The verb starve means suffering or death caused by a lack of food, though people also use it as a dramatic way to say they are hungry, as in, "If we don't start cooking dinner now, I think I'll starve." The word starve has origins in the Old English word steorfan, meaning “to die.” It is true that if you don't eat for a period of time, you could starve, meaning die from hunger. Today, starve is also used to describe less severe limitations on food, such as when you tell your friend, "I have to go to lunch now. I'm starving." This is a way of describing discomfort caused by hunger.

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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.

See Examples For:

starve starves starved starving

Environmental advocates say it would starve the Delta of needed water and threaten fish that are already in severe decline.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026

Joshua Kushner and his family, one imagines, will not starve.

From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026

However, not only do these chemicals affect the bees directly, they can also remove important plants that they rely on for food causing them to starve.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026

He fears prey availability has not recovered enough to support tigers, who could starve.

From Barron's ● Jul. 8, 2026

Then the people as well as the animals begin to starve.

From "My Life with the Chimpanzees" by Jane Goodall

And as the government shutdown starves the markets of official data, any individual announcement from a company can take on more meaning.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 28, 2025

It isolates the cell from the surrounding tissue and essentially starves it of nutrients.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 28, 2024

But since the keto diet has a very low carbohydrate intake, it's thought that this "starves" the cancer cells of the energy they need to grow.

From Salon ● Jun. 21, 2023

The poison starves the body's cells of oxygen, which can induce heart attacks.

From BBC ● Apr. 27, 2023

“Nobody in Germany starves, and few, if any, go hungry,” he wrote.

From "Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

"We never actually starved, but sometimes we never had quite enough to eat."

From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026

Investors are starved for information in a new world of “terse” communication from the central bank.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

The push has made progress that few thought possible back in 2022, when Huawei was starved of U.S. technology and Chinese AI companies depended almost entirely on Nvidia.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Osterberg courted Britain's middle and upper classes for her college, deciding most elementary school girls were "absolutely unfit to be trained... their muscles have been starved from babyhood".

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

The difference it made was startling, as though a person ten years younger were shining through the starved mask; for a moment, he was recognizable as the man who had laughed at Harry’s parents’ wedding.

From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

Environmentalists say the wall will accelerate erosion elsewhere while starving the neighboring salt marsh of sediment, hurting wildlife.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026

That’s necessary magic in an age that’s starving for it.

From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026

He says they are "starving themselves because every other route has been closed to them".

From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026

Commissary is often now the difference between starving and a semi-normal diet, he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026

“I’m starving to death,” he said, retying the knot of his bathrobe and pottering over to the refrigerator.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023