starve [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times starve simply meant ‘to die’, especially a lingering death from hunger, cold, disease, or grief. People continued to use the word in this way for many centuries, and in northern English dialect starve can still mean ‘to die of cold’. The origin of the word is probably an ancient Germanic base that meant ‘to be rigid’. This rigid/dead connection is preserved in the modern slang use of *stiff to refer to a dead body.