Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One that is starving or being starved.
- adjective Starving.
- adjective Poor in quality; inadequate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A starving or starved person; an animal or a plant that is made thin or lean and weak through want of nourishment.
- Starving (from hunger or cold); hungry; lean; pining with want.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who, or that which, pines from lack of food, or nutriment.
- adjective Hungry; lean; pining with want.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who is
thin fromlack offood .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone who is starving (or being starved)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And this after what the magazine calls "decades of whittling" in the state's financial support for UC, culminating in a "starveling" budget!
City Journal 2010
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• "You starveling, you eel skin, you bull's pizzle!"
Ken Adelman: Bard Blog: Candidate Insults Ken Adelman 2010
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• "You starveling, you eel skin, you bull's pizzle!"
Ken Adelman: Bard Blog: Candidate Insults Ken Adelman 2010
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Compare some of these to what's said this political season: ⢠"You starveling, you eel skin, you bull's pizzle!" ⢠"You stock-fish, you bow case!"
Ken Adelman: Bard Blog: Candidate Insults Ken Adelman 2010
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Mrs. Crook, "she turned to call to the departing housekeeper," when you've done wi 'the bannocks, fix this starveling man a bowl of parritch to fill in the chinks with.
Sick Cycle Carousel 2010
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• "You starveling, you eel skin, you bull's pizzle!"
Ken Adelman: Bard Blog: Candidate Insults Ken Adelman 2010
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The silly spotty dog is a natural-eared blue merle Great Dane; her name is Signy; she's ten years and one month old, and when I first met her as a two-year-old she was a starveling shelter rescue so thin I could span her waist with my hands.
a hell of a way to run a railroad kit_kindred 2008
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As these creatures were changed from the starveling savages who were their ancestors.
Tin 2010
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Whose fscking brilliant idea was it to take this starveling waif and stretch her across these rough, scratchy, painful rocks so that one of them is digging visibly into her chest?
Sports Illustrated: Hem hem Cosmo7 2009
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I tasted the wine Galan had drunk, his full lower lip, his curving upper lip, and I was a starveling at a feast, my kisses all hunger and gluttony, and his were the same.
Wildfire Sarah Micklem 2009
yarb commented on the word starveling
...he loaded my plate as if he had been cramming the craw of a starveling.
- Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 9 ch. 4
October 7, 2008