starve

CEFRB1

/stɑːv/

verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    verb

    To suffer or die because you do not get enough food.

  2. 02

    verb

    Extra detail

    To be very hungry.

Examples

  • I might as well drown as starve.

  • The animals were left to starve to death.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
1

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meanings

  1. To suffer severely because of lack of food or of not eating.

  2. To die because of lack of food or of not eating.

  3. To kill or attempt to kill by depriving of food.

More examples

In context

  • We cannot stand quiet and watch people starve.

  • 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.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The animals in the drought will blank if they cannot find water and grass.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

verb

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, ba...