Famish
['fæmɪʃ]
Definition
(v. t.) To starve, kill, or destroy with hunger.
(v. t.) To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to distress with hanger.
(v. t.) To kill, or to cause to suffer extremity, by deprivation or denial of anything necessary.
(v. t.) To force or constrain by famine.
(v. i.) To die of hunger; to starve.
(v. i.) To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to come near to perish.
(v. i.) To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary.
(a.) Smoky; hot; choleric.
Checker: Yale
Synonyms and Synonymous
v. a. [1]. Starve, kill with hunger.[2]. Distress with hunger, exhaust by hunger.
v. n. [1]. Starve, die of hunger, perish for want of food.[2]. Be distressed by hunger.
Checker: Nellie
Definition
v.t. to starve.—v.i. to die or suffer extreme hunger or thirst.—n. Fam′ishment starvation.
Checked by Jerome
Unserious Contents or Definition
To dream that you are famishing, foretells that you are meeting disheartening failure in some enterprise which you considered a promising success. To see others famishing, brings sorrow to others as well as to yourself.
Edited by Helen
Examples
- I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body. Walter Scott. Ivanhoe.
- On the morning of the 4th I learned that Lee had ordered rations up from Danville for his famishing army, and that they were to meet him at Farmville. Ulysses S. Grant. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.
- And now, the sea, late our defence, seems our prison bound; hemmed in by its gulphs, we shall die like the famished inhabitants of a besieged town. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- There was the huge famished brute, its black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the ground. Arthur Conan Doyle. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
- Is she ill, or only famished? Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell? Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.
- Famished, I think. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind: to my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it was. Charlotte Bronte. Villette.
- You sympathize with that proud patrician who does not sympathize with his famished fellow-men, and insults them. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
Inputed by Elvira