FAMISH • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Famish

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verb

Famish v. t. (past & past part. famished; pres. part. famishing)

1.

To starve, kill, or destroy with hunger.

2.

To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to distress with hanger. "And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread." "The pains of famished Tantalus he'll feel."

3.

To kill, or to cause to suffer extremity, by deprivation or denial of anything necessary. "And famish him of breath, if not of bread."

4.

To force or constrain by famine. "He had famished Paris into a surrender."

Famish v. i.

1.

To die of hunger; to starve.

2.

To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to come near to perish. "You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?"

3.

To suffer extremity from deprivation of anything essential or necessary. "The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish."

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Etymology of 'Famish'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Famish" Quotes from Famous Books

... the adoption of such drastic measures. They were straining the limits of human endurance too callously. Nothing could alter our resolve to dispute with the Boer every inch of the ground we defended. So much was agreed. But the tendency to famish us displayed by our Rulers was not calculated to improve the morale of a civilian, or any, army. It did not bespeak the early relief of Kimberley. Actions like Kekewich's and Gorle's in the matter of bread fostered feelings of indifference. ...

— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... the eagerness to "get on" was suddenly slackened; the determination to famish himself as far as Fondi by way of punishing the landlord was abandoned; John chose the best apartment in the inn for his master's reception, and preparations were made to ...

— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended, these things are not yet professed. We ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... even as in the heavens So in the earth, to this day is not known: Late did he shine upon the English side; Now we are victors; upon us he smiles. What towns of any moment but we have? At pleasure here we lie near Orleans; Otherwhiles the famish'd English, like pale ghosts, Faintly besiege us one ...

— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... that this is a remedy which aggravates, whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to labor—for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is by all its insidious ...

— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

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