starve
Americanverb (used without object)
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to die or perish from lack of food or nourishment.
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to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger.
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to suffer from extreme poverty and need.
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to feel a strong need or desire.
The child was starving for affection.
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Chiefly British Dialect. to perish or suffer extremely from cold.
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Obsolete. to die.
verb (used with object)
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to cause to starve; kill, weaken, or reduce by lack of food.
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to subdue, or force to some condition or action, by hunger.
to starve a besieged garrison into a surrender.
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to cause to suffer for lack of something needed or craved.
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Chiefly British Dialect. to cause to perish, or to suffer extremely, from cold.
verb
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to die or cause to die from lack of food
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to deprive (a person or animal) or (of a person, etc) to be deprived of food
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informal (intr) to be very hungry
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to deprive or be deprived (of something necessary), esp so as to cause suffering or malfunctioning
the engine was starved of fuel
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to bring (to) a specified condition by starving
to starve someone into submission
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archaic to be or cause to be extremely cold
Synonym Usage
See hungry.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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starvernoun
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half-starvedadjective
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half-starvingadjective
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self-starvedadjective
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unstarvedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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starvesimple
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starvessimple
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have starvedperfect
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has starvedperfect
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am starvingprogressive
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are starvingprogressive
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is starvingprogressive
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have been starvingperfect progressive
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has been starvingperfect progressive
Past
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starvedsimple
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had starvedperfect
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was starvingprogressive
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were starvingprogressive
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had been starvingperfect progressive
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.
Vocabulary lists containing starve
"When Cultures Meet"
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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Excerpt from "A Raisin in the Sun"
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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:
Experts warned that Ukraine is Europe’s breadbasket and Europe would starve.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 18, 2026
“You’re going to probably starve the person to death before you starve the cancer to death,” she said.
From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026
The book’s opening lines capture his zero-sum Malthusian thinking: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 2026
"If I don't find a job here, I'll have to emigrate again. We have no choice. We can't starve," he added.
From Barron's ● Mar. 11, 2026
Why do people have to starve when mountains of food are rotting away in other parts of the world?
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
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
This causes accelerated growth of algae and other plant life in a process called eutrophication which starves other organisms like fish of oxygen.
From BBC ● May 24, 2024
It isolates the cell from the surrounding tissue and essentially starves it of nutrients.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 28, 2024
Granted, the holiest of high holidays in all of American sportsballs never starves for attention.
From Salon ● Feb. 10, 2024
Since we are all supposed to be equal, if one person starves, then all should starve.
From "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" by Loung Ung
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
And intensifying competition means we will increasingly be in “an investing landscape where certain segments of the economy and markets are starved for capital, while others are flush with attractive financing options.”
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
The engines are energy starved, which has required techniques to recover energy even on qualifying laps.
From BBC ● May 23, 2026
The current standoff at the crucial waterway has starved the market of roughly 10 million barrels of oil per day, according to Manish Raj, managing director at Velandera Energy Partners.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 24, 2026
In pain, half starved, with a tapeworm and an eye infection, he collapsed on the road to town and was taken to the infirmary by a kindly widow.
From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline
That’s necessary magic in an age that’s starving for it.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
Commissary is often now the difference between starving and a semi-normal diet, he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
"It was too small. Just tiny little bite-sized pieces. I was like, 'I'm starving, can I get another plate?' but they said no!"
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2026
Despite her efforts, Vicki's daughter struggled to gain weight and she felt like medical staff were insinuating she was "not doing enough" and "starving" her baby.
From BBC ● Jun. 15, 2026
I looked about me at the land and it was life to my starving spirit.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
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.
