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Starves vs Starven - What's the difference?

starves | starven |

As a verb starves

is (starve).

As an adjective starven is

(archaic) starved.

starves

English

Verb

(head)
  • (starve)

    • 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

    starven

    English

    Adjective

    (head)
  • (archaic) starved
  • * {{quote-book, year=1898, author=Neil Munro, title=John Splendid, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=CHAPTER XXI.--SEVEN BROKEN MEN. At last there was but one horseman in chase of the six men who were fleeing without a look behind them--a frenzied blackavised trooper on a short-legged garron he rode most clumsily, with arms that swung like wings from the shoulders, his boots keeping time to the canter with grotesque knockings against the gaunt and sweating flanks of his starven animal. }}
  • * {{quote-book, year=1901, author=Various, title=Successful Recitations, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=So Mr. King, as assistant surgeon, Bandaged, and dosed, and nursed, and dressed, And worked, as he ate and drank, with zest, Until he began to blossom and burgeon To redness of features and fulness of cheek, And his starven hands grew plump and sleek. }}
  • * {{quote-book, year=1920, author=John Freeman, title=Poems New and Old, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=Sooner the Heavenly Powers would let them lie Eternally unrising 'neath a sky Arctic and lonely, where death's starven wind Raged full-delighted:--sooner would those kind Serenities man's generation cast Back into nothingness, than heaven should waste With finite anguish infinitely prolonged Until the Eternal Spring were stained and wronged. }}