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Devour vs Starve - What's the difference?

devour | starve |

As verbs the difference between devour and starve

is that devour is to eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously while starve is (obsolete) to die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.

devour

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously.
  • To rapidly destroy, engulf, or lay waste.
  • :
  • *Bible, (w) i. 20
  • If ye refuseye shall be devoured with the sword.
  • *{{quote-book, year=2006, author=(w)
  • , chapter=1, title= Internal Combustion , passage=Blast after blast, fiery outbreak after fiery outbreak, like a flaming barrage from within,
  • To take in avidly with the intellect.
  • :
  • *
  • *:Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
  • To absorb or engross the mind fully, especially in a destructive manner.
  • :
  • Synonyms

    * gobble, gorge, consume, devastate, overwhelm, wolf

    starve

    English

    (wikipedia starve)

    Verb

  • (obsolete) To die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.
  • * 1596 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , IV.i.4:
  • noble Britomart / Released her, that else was like to sterue , / Through cruell knife that her deare heart did kerue.
  • To die because of lack of food or of not eating.
  • *
  • To be very hungry.
  • Hey, ma, I'm starving !
  • To destroy, make capitulate or at least make suffer by deprivation, notably of food.
  • To deprive of nourishment.
  • They starved the child until it withered away.
  • (transitive, British, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire) To kill with cold.
  • I was half starved waiting out in that wind.

    Derived terms

    * starvation * starveling * starving

    Anagrams

    * * * English ergative verbs