Suffering from extreme hunger; dying or weak from lack of food; also used to mean extremely hungry for something non-food.
From Old English 'steorfan' meaning 'to die' or 'to suffer.' The word originally just meant 'to perish' but became specifically associated with dying from hunger by the 14th century. The 'v' sound is an unusual development in English phonetics.
Starving is one of the few words where modern usage has completely inverted the original meaning—to a medieval English speaker, 'starving' simply meant 'dying of any cause,' but now we use it for slight hunger ('I'm starving!'), which would horrify our ancestors who reserved the word for actual death.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.