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Webster 1913 Edition


Starvation

Star-va′tion

(stär-vā′shŭn)
,
Noun.
The act of starving, or the state of being starved.
☞ This word was first used, according to Horace Walpole, by Henry Dundas, the first Lord Melville, in a speech on American affairs in 1775, which obtained for him the nickname of Starvation Dundas.
Starvation, we are also told, belongs to the class of ’vile compounds' from being a mongrel; as if English were not full of mongrels, and as if it would not be in distressing straits without them.”
Fitzed. Hall.

Definition 2024


starvation

starvation

English

Noun

starvation (countable and uncountable, plural starvations)

  1. A condition of severe suffering due to a lack of nutrition.
    • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter IV
      "We haven't one chance for life in a hundred thousand if we don't find food and water upon Caprona. This water coming out of the cliff is not salt; but neither is it fit to drink, though each of us has drunk. It is fair to assume that inland the river is fed by pure streams, that there are fruits and herbs and game. Shall we lie out here and die of thirst and starvation with a land of plenty possibly only a few hundred yards away? We have the means for navigating a subterranean river. Are we too cowardly to utilize this means?"
  2. (figuratively) Severe shortage of resources.
    • 2002, Allan N. Packer, Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform (page 362)
      However, if the ASE application is paged out because of memory starvation, the entire process is blocked and no useful work can be done until the required pages are brought into memory.

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