Etymologically
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starve

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /stɑːv/[1]
  • US: /stɑɹv/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sterven (“to die, perish”),[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English steorfan (“to die”) (past tense stearf, past participle storfen),[2][6][7][8] inherited from Proto-Germanic *sterbaną (“to become stiff, to die”).[2][9][10][11] Its cognates kept the general sense: Old Frisian sterva, Old Saxon sterban, Dutch sterven, Old High German sterban and German sterben all mean to die.[12][2][11][8] The Germanic verb probably came from a base meaning to be stiff or rigid,[13][14][15][16] the base of stare and stark,[12][14][15] and the OED and Holthausen compare Old Norse stjarfi (“epilepsy”), stirfinn (“obstinate”), Old Irish ussarb (“death”) and Ancient Greek στέρφνιος (stérphnios, “stiff, hard”).[12][17][8][9] Barnhart and Köbler trace it to Proto-Indo-European *sterbʰ-,[11][10] which Etymonline takes as an extended form of Proto-Indo-European *ster- (“stiff”).[2] Ayto and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explain the sense "die" from the stiffness of a corpse.[15][16] Old English also had a related noun steorfa (“mortality, pestilence”), recorded until about 1225.[6][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

To die, of any cause: in Old English, in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies (about 1000).[12][11][6] The verb was used in general of dying, though especially of a slow death, the cause being named in a phrase.[7][16]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English sterven still meant to die or perish, and also to die spiritually;[2][3] Chaucer used it 66 times, with the strong past tense starf.[18][7] From the 12th century on it narrowed toward dying from cold and dying from hunger,[15] with phrases such as dying of hunger from late Old English (Peterborough Chronicle) and of cold from the early 15th century.[12][2] The verb became weak by the 16th century,[2][7] when it also took the transitive sense to kill with hunger, recorded in Palsgrave (1530) according to Barnhart,[11] by the 1520s according to Etymonline;[2] the OED's first record is from 1570.[12] By the 17th century the meanings were limited to death by hunger or cold,[7][19] and the general sense "die" is last recorded in 1657.[12] Trench compared the narrowing with French noyer, which came to mean only to drown.[19] The hunger senses later softened to suffering from lack of food, and then to being very hungry,[7][20] while the sense of dying of cold became archaic in the standard language but lived on in northern English, Scots and Irish dialect ("starved with cold"),[2][12][21][16] where in the Midlands to clem was the word for perishing of hunger.[2] The derivatives starveling (1546) and starvation (1778) followed,[11] the latter one of the few English words that add Latin -ation to a native stem.[11][22] German sterben keeps the original sense, so that English now needs the phrase starve to death (from 1910 in Etymonline).[2][15]

Timeline

  • c. 1000 – Old English steorfan, to die, in Ælfric.[12][11]
  • late Old English – to die of hunger, in the Peterborough Chronicle.[12]
  • c. 1330 – to die of grief or love (obsolete after 1616).[12]
  • c. 1400 – of plants, to wither and die (obsolete by 1722).[12]
  • c. 1425 – transitive, to kill.[12]
  • c. 1430 – to die, or nearly die, of cold.[12]
  • c. 1450 – to die or waste away from lack of food.[12]
  • 1530 – transitive, to kill with hunger (Palsgrave).[11]
  • 1546 – starveling.[11]
  • 1570 – transitive, to deprive of food.[12]
  • 1657 – last record of the general sense to die.[12]
  • before 1680 – of a plant or tissue, to lose vitality for lack of nourishment.[12]
  • 1778 – starvation.[11]
  • 1910 – starve to death.[2]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To suffer or die from lack of food: Thousands starved during the siege.[20][5][12]
  2. To keep a person or animal without enough food, or cause it to die of hunger.[20][5][12]
  3. (informal) To be very hungry: When's dinner? I'm starving.[20][5]
  4. To deprive, or be deprived, of something needed, often with of or for: a school starved of funds.[20][5]
  5. To force someone into a condition by starving them, with into: to starve the garrison into surrender.[20]
  6. (archaic, dialect) To be, or make, very cold; to die of cold.[20][5][12][21]
  7. (obsolete, Old English–1657) To die.[5][12]

Word family

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  15. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  16. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  17. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  18. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  19. ^ a b Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  21. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  22. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray