famished
verb
Form of famish , past tense of famish.
Simple meaning
To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to nearly perish.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
famishtSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfæmɪʃt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
past tense of famish
To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to nearly perish.
past tense of famish
To die of hunger; to starve to death.
past tense of famish
To exhaust the strength or endurance of, by hunger; to cause to be very hungry.
past tense of famish
Die of food deprivation
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To suffer extreme hunger or thirst, so as to be exhausted in strength, or to nearly perish.
Used this way, famished is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It lands hard, so it overstates anything mild. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Harsh or blunt
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.