starve

When a person or an animal dies from a lack of food, we say that person or animal "starved" to death. Starvation is a serious issue in countries all around the world, especially for children:

• A little boy starved to death because of a widespread famine. (This sentence uses "starve" as a verb.)
• There are starving people in the Horn of Africa. (This sentence uses "starving" as an adjective.)
• The cattle died of starvation because they couldn’t find enough (grass) to eat. (The word "starvation" is a noun.)

Sometimes the word "starve" is used when a person is really hungry but not on the verge of death:

• The kids say they’re starving.
• Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.
• Bob says he’s going to starve to death if he doesn’t get something to eat soon.

There are a few other ways to use this word:

• The cat is starving for attention. (The cat wants people to pet her.)
• Charles is on a starvation diet. (He’s not eating very much in order to lose weight.)
• After years of work as a starving artist, Rachel is now quite successful in selling her paintings. (A starting artist is a person who works as an artist but makes very little money.)

Click here to go to the Word of the Day page.

This page was first published on April 21, 2012. It was updated on February 28, 2015.