[f. STARVE v. + -ING2.]

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  † 1.  Of death: ? Lingering, languishing. Obs.

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1387–8.  T. Usk, Test. Love, I. i. (Skeat), 5. Certes, her absence is to me an helle; my sterving deth thus in wo it myneth, that endeles care is throughout myne herte clenched.

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  † 2.  Causing death, killing. Obs.

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a. 1605.  Montgomerie, Misc. Poems, xlv. 11. Come, gentill Death,… Thy sterving straik with force thou let out flie, And light on me, to end my peirles pyne.

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  3.  That is dying of hunger; that lacks the necessaries of life; also absol.

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1719.  De Foe, Crusoe, II. (Globe), 339. I also forgot not the starving Crew … but order’d my own Boat … to carry them a Sack of Bread.

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1732.  Pope, Ess. Man, II. 269. The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest.

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1817.  Shelley, Rev. Islam, X. xv. All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case Like starving infants wailed.

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1886.  W. J. Tucker, E. Europe, xxxi. 315. How beneficially all this luxuriance of a bountiful Nature might be applied to the cravings of the needy and starving.

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  4.  That causes or entails starvation or famine; also, that treats disease by stinting the patient of food.

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1590.  Sir J. Smythe, Disc. Weapons, 1. The tumultuarie, licentious, and staruing warres of the Low Countries.

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1693.  Humours Town, 22. Modesty is a starving Quality, and only another Name for Folly.

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1731.  Gentl. Mag., I. 118. The whole income remaining to the Church is but 15, 20, or 30 l. Yearly; which is but a starving Support.

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1824.  Scott, St. Ronan’s, vii. Then he is a starving doctor, Mrs. Blower—reduces diseases as soldiers do towns—by famine.

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1899.  Westm. Gaz., 26 June, 7/3. Starving trades—that was to say, trades that were starving those who had their capital invested in them—must ultimately also starve the workpeople.

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  b.  That causes one to starve with cold. rare.

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1684.  Otway, Prol. to N. Lee’s Constantine, 32. Under the starving sign of Capricorn.

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1721.  Amherst, Terræ Filius, No. 13 (1726), I. 72. [He] found him in his lodgings by a little starving fire, with a rush light candle before him.

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1897.  T. H. Warren, By Severn Sea, etc., 41.

        Silence was over all, death everywhere,
Death desolate, mute, motionless and frore,
On sullen earth, clogged flood and starving air.

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