STARVATION

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of depriving of food or subjecting to famine

Example:

they were charged with the starvation of children in their care

Synonyms:

starvation; starving

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("starvation" is a kind of...):

deprivation; privation (act of depriving someone of food or money or rights)

Derivation:

starve (deprive of food)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A state of extreme hunger resulting from lack of essential nutrients over a prolonged period

Synonyms:

famishment; starvation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("starvation" is a kind of...):

hunger; hungriness (a physiological need for food; the consequence of food deprivation)

Derivation:

starve (be hungry; go without food)

Credits

Context examples:

The brain normally uses only glucose for energy, but during starvation ketone bodies can become the main energy source for the brain.

(Formation of Ketone Bodies from Acetyl-CoA Pathway, NCI Thesaurus/BIOCARTA)

All enterococci sampled were resistant to a common set of stresses—including antibiotics, disinfectants, drying and starvation—suggesting that the ancestors of all enterococci also shared these abilities.

(Enterococci may have evolved antimicrobial resistance millions of years ago, NIH)

The shark dropped back into the sea, helpless, yet with its full strength, doomed—to lingering starvation—a living death less meet for it than for the man who devised the punishment.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

These two, finding that through his ignorance of the language he was helpless in their hands, had kept him a prisoner, and had endeavoured by cruelty and starvation to make him sign away his own and his sister’s property.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had refrained from offering his "Sea Lyrics" for publication, until driven to it by starvation.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

By the time his search had disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The scientists found that hydraulic failure is universal when trees die, while carbon starvation is a contributing factor roughly half the time.

(What's killing trees during droughts?, National Science Foundation)

I might be driven into the wide Atlantic and feel all the tortures of starvation or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me.