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Ravenous vs Starve - What's the difference?

ravenous | starve |

As an adjective ravenous

is very hungry.

As a verb starve is

(obsolete) to die; in later use especially to die slowly, waste away.

ravenous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Very hungry.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers)
  • , chapter=5, title= A Cuckoo in the Nest , passage=The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite. There is something humiliating about it.}}
  • (rfc-sense) Eager for prey or gratification.
  • * 1843 , (Thomas Carlyle), '', book 3, ch. IX, ''Working Aristocracy
  • Supply-and-demand? One begins to be weary of such work. Leave all to egoism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause: — it is the Gospel of Despair!

    Synonyms

    * starving (qualifier) * See also

    See also

    * voracious

    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