starve

verb11

1. •
   to die because there is no food to eat

   • During the Cultural Revolution I was exiled to Xincai County in Henan Province. There, 36 percent of the people starved to death in the early 1960s. — 1990
2. •
   To be very hungry.

   • I was starving so I wrote S.O.S. on the desert island using rocks.
3. •
   To kill or attempt to kill by depriving of food.
4. •
   To deprive of nourishment or of some vital component.

   • The uncaring parents starved the child of love.
   • The patient’s brain was starved of oxygen.
5. •
   To deteriorate for want of any essential thing.
6. •
   To suffer severely because of lack of food or of not eating.

   • Ah (said the Ape as sighing vvondrous sad) / Its an hard case, vvhen men of good deseruing / Must either driuen be perforce to steruing, / Or asked for their pas by euerie squib: […] — 1591
7. •
   To make suffer severely by depriving of food.
8. •
   To force a combatant to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in a targeted siege.

   • If they refuse to surrender the garrison, we'll just starve them out.
9. •
   To force a population center to submit or surrender by depriving of food, as in sieges in international armed conflicts.

   • Some historians have since classified the Siege of Leningrad as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
10. •
    (UK) To kill with cold; to (cause to) die from cold.

    • I was half starved waiting out in that wind.
11. •
    (no longer used) To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.