famish
Pronunciation
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
Pronunciation
- (British) IPA: /ˈfamɪʃ/
famish (famishes, present participle famishing; past and past participle famished)
- (obsolete, transitive) To starve (to death); to kill or destroy with hunger.
- c. 1588–1593, [William Shakespeare], The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: […] (First Quarto), London: Printed by Iohn Danter, and are to be sold by Edward White & Thomas Millington, […], published 1594, OCLC 222241046 ↗, [Act II, scene iii] ↗:
- Some ſay that Rauens foſter forlorne children, / The whilſt their owne birds famiſh in their neſts: / Oh be to me though thy hard hart ſay no, / Nothing ſo kinde but ſomething pittiful.
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 54573970 ↗, partition I, section IV, member 1:
- Even so did Corellius Rufus, another grave senator, by the relation of Plinius Secundus, Epist. lib.1, epist.12, famish himself to death {{...}
- (transitive) To exhaust#Verb|exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to distress#Verb|distress with hunger.
- And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. -- Genesis 41:55.
- The pains of famished Tantalus he'll feel. --Dryden.
- (transitive) To kill, or to cause to suffer extremity, by deprivation or denial of anything necessary.
- And famish him of breath, if not of bread. -- Milton.
- (transitive) To force or constrain by famine.
- He had famished Paris into a surrender. -- Burke.
- (intransitive) To die of hunger; to starve.
- (intransitive) To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to come near to perish.
- You are all resolved rather to die than to famish? -- Shakespeare
- (intransitive) To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary.
- The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish. -- Proverbs 10:3.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003