Definition of "famish"

famish

/ˈfamɪʃ/

verb
third-person singular simple present famishes, present participle famishing, simple past and past participle famished
1. (obsolete, transitive) To starve (to death); to kill or destroy with hunger.
  Quotations
  Some ſay that Rauens foſter forlorne children, / The whilſt their owne birds famiſh in their neſts: / Oh be to me though thy hard hart ſay no, / Nothing ſo kinde but ſomething pittiful.
  c. 1588–1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, and are to be sold by Edward White & Thomas Millington, […], published 1594, [Act II, scene iii]
  Even so did Corellius Rufus, another grave senator, by the relation of Plinius Secundus, Epist. lib.1, epist.12, famish himself to death […]
  1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition I, section IV, member 1
2. (transitive) To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to cause to be very hungry.
  Quotations
  And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Genesis 41:55
  The pains of famished Tantalus [he] shall feel.
  1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]
3. (transitive) To kill, or to cause great suffering to, by depriving or denying anything necessary.
  Quotations
  And famish him of breath, if not of bread?
  1667, John Milton, “Book XII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
4. (transitive) To force, control, or constrain by famine.
  Quotations
  He had […] famished Paris into a surrender.
  1790 November, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. […], London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […]
5. (intransitive) To die of hunger; to starve to death.
6. (intransitive) To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to nearly perish.
  Quotations
  You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?
  c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]
7. (intransitive) To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary.
  Quotations
  The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Proverbs 10:3

Definition of "famish"

famish

verb

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