Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Famished   /fˈæmɪʃt/   Listen
Famished

adjective
1.
Extremely hungry.  Synonyms: esurient, ravenous, sharp-set, starved.  "A ravenous boy" , "The family was starved and ragged" , "Fell into the esurient embrance of a predatory enemy"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Famished" Quotes from Famous Books



... only tended to impoverish those countries, to debase the mind, and render their subjects the veriest slaves of superstition. And in countries where we see heaven showering down abundance, the people are poor and famished, while the priests and monks are opulent and bloated. Their kings are without power and without glory; their subjects languish ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... they nearly killed him. He was lucky to escape with his life. After bathing his wounds at a pool in the early morning he wandered all day long, but again could find nothing. Toward night, when he could scarcely drag his famished and wounded body along, he saw a ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... slept with the cow; of my idiot half-brother always sitting at the door, or limping down the Pass to beg; of my half-sister always spinning, and resting her enormous goitre on a great stone; of my being a famished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I, the only child of my father's second marriage—if it even was a marriage. What more natural than for you to compare notes with me, and say, 'We are as one by age; at that same ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look. "What're you givin' us is that ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... that my best chance was to strike some stream and follow the current. It would take me into a valley where I would be apt to find houses. At last I became so weary that I lay down in a dense thicket and slept till morning. I awoke as hungry as a famished wolf, and saw nothing but a dense forest on every side. But the brook murmured that it would guide me, and I now made much better progress in the daylight. At last I reached a little clearing and a wood-chopper's cottage. The ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... unsupplied[obs3], unfurnished; unreplenished, unfed[obs3]; unstored[obs3], untreasured[obs3]; empty-handed. meager, poor, thin, scrimp, sparing, spare, stinted; starved, starving; halfstarved, famine-stricken, famished; jejune. scant &c. (small) 32; scarce; not to be had, not to be had for love or money, not to be had at any price; scurvy; stingy &c. 819; at the end of one's tether; without resources &c. 632; in want &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... panic, shamefully abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a writing on a piece of birch-bark to the effect that all the rest were killed. They had left a supply of bread and pork, and while the famished eleven rested and refreshed themselves they were joined by Solomon Keyes, the man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated away in a canoe from the place of the fight. After drifting for a considerable distance, the wind blew him ashore, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... know, Not without hunger. Others of some note, As story tells, have trod this wilderness: The fugitive Bond-woman, with her son, Outcast Nebaioth, yet found here relief By a providing Angel; all the race 310 Of Israel here had famished, had not God Rained from heaven manna; and that Prophet bold, Native of Thebez, wandering here, was fed Twice by a voice inviting him to eat. Of thee those forty days none hath regard, Forty and more deserted here indeed." To whom thus Jesus:—"What ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... her brows anxiously. "It is very strange," she said, "and very thoughtless of her. Freddy will be famished." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... not beg An hour's admittance to his private ear? Like one, who wanders through long barren wilds And yet foreknows no hospitable inn Is near to succour hunger, eats his fill, Before his painful march; So would I feed a while my famished eyes Before we part; for I have far to go, If death be ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... to keep his eyes from crying. How long ago it seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide! Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad lay like a tired dog, trying not to sob. The mountebank was curious, the mountebank's doxy was kind; both applauded lustily the boy's resolve to march to Paris, cost what it might cost, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... has a greater army than Pharaoh can muster in these times of peace, for in addition to his trained troops, all the thousands of the Bedouin tribes of the desert look on him as lord, and at his word will fall on the wealth of Egypt like famished vultures on a fatted ox. Moreover, here you have but a guard of five hundred men, whereas Abi's regiments, summoned to do you honour, and his ships of war block the river and the southern road. How then will you leave Memphis without his good leave; how will you even send messengers ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... his knife on a piece of bread very carefully, laid it open beside him, and threw the crust to a lean dog that appeared suddenly from beneath the table, as though it had come up through a trap-door; the half-famished creature bolted the bread with a snap and a gulp and disappeared again as suddenly and silently, just in time to avoid the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... spread a newspaper upon the floor, and bade Fido eat of cold potatoes, meat, and bread. There was, nearly always, a nice, juicy bone to beguile the tedium of the afternoon. Fido and the old man seldom went home to supper before half past five, and Fido would have been famished were it not for ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... done, that frightful one, With glare of vulture famished, Blew out the light, and in the night Gave several ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... slimy ditch that bordered the road. These were garments and robes of all kind and value; the broidered mantle of the gallant, the hood and veil of my lady, and the rags of the peasant. While glancing at the labour of the masker, the cavalier beheld a herd of swine, gaunt and half famished, run to the spot in the hopes of food, and the traveller shuddered to think what food they might have anticipated! But ere he reached the gate, those of the animals that had been busiest rooting at the infectious heap, dropped down dead ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... large kettle; and a mule being killed here, his head was boiled in it for several hours, and made a passable soup for famished people. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... fallen birches to discover its cause. Next moment, as he told me afterwards, he stood frozen, for there behind the boughs of one of the trees was the huge white bear, eating some animal that it had killed. The beast saw him, and, mad with rage at being disturbed, for it was famished after its long journey on the floe, reared itself up on its hind legs, roaring till the air shook. High it towered, ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... story was filled thickly with the captured Americans. They starved, pined away, died by hundreds. Cunningham withheld their food, and cheated even the miserable sick and dying. They froze to death in the chill winter of 1776-77. Sometimes the famished prisoners would come to the narrow windows of the old Sugar-House, crying for charity to those who passed, but the sentries drove them back. They pined away in the dark corners of the crowded rooms, dreaming of the old homestead in Connecticut, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... later established themselves in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? were they Berichons and Angevins? They were without a doubt Gauls whom the Romans called Cisalpines, and whom we call Transalpines, famished mountain-dwellers, neighbours of the Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of the Seine and the Marne did not know at that time that Rome existed, and could not take it into their heads to pass Mount Cenis, as Hannibal did later, to go to steal the wardrobes of ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... for the boat to be sunk by gunfire, but somehow the memory of that stark figure at the helm persisted. Try as he would, he failed to banish from his mind the staring, sightless eyes and grey, famished face.... ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... entered the ears of our young men and young women, they could not, dare not, go abroad. How could they go to Ceylon, to Burmah, or to Hindostan, with the cry of their country's heathen ringing their ears! How could they tear themselves away from famished millions kneeling at their feet in chains and begging for the bread of life, and roam afar to China or the South Sea Islands! Increasing numbers filed with a missionary spirit felt that their obligations were at home, and they were resolved that if they could not carry ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... be wanting," said she, trailing a long branch of the wild grape-vine, with its pale and delicately fragrant blooms, along the snowy board. "Are the cheese-cakes a success, Mrs. McLean? I didn't dine, and am famished.—I see that you have at last heard from your cousin," ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... captain's, glass directed toward them, and heard him say at last, "They must have been dead a long time." These were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for safety; but must have famished. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... and with a famished grin showed rows of strong sound teeth. And he, too, looked suspiciously round. We were quite unobserved. Then I handed him half my melon and a chunk of wheaten bread. He snatched it all from my ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... the ground, I wanted to eat so badly. I searched books for descriptions of meals and feasts, I tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I too was enjoying all these good things. I was really famished, and in spite of a few weaknesses for biscuits I know that I showed much courage."[96] Nadia's motive idea, that she wished to be slim, corresponds to the abstinent man's idea that he wishes to be "moral," and only differs from it by having the advantage ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... able to urge an exhausted or famished troop on to a final assault, you may even gain the victory with their last vestige of energy, their last bit of strength, provided you can inspire them with sufficient enthusiasm; but it is impossible to save a lost cause with troops who have been ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... sir, very overpowering, we pursued our joint labours until two in the morning, and then the brute was only half raw. One penknife was our sole cutlery; but we managed to cut through the skin, and we devoured the oily stuff like famished hounds, sir. We were ashamed; but, as the poet truly observes, 'Necessity knows no law,' and we endured the scurrilous language of the woman when, on the morrow, she found the bottom of the shovel encrusted with dirt and the top ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice there Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, as a rock's huge point he turned, A watch-fire ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... er-Rashid, who then ordered that alms should be distributed, and good done to all, and bade liberate all that were in prison and among those that were set free was Attaf. When he found himself out of gaol, beaten and famished and naked, he looked up to heaven and exclaimed, Thanks be to thee, O Lord, in every situation, and crying said, It must be for some fault committed by me in the past, for God had taken me into favour and I have said repaid Him in disobedience; but I pray to Him for pardon for having ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... it! And do you ask from whom? Is there a Gallic tumult? Have Cimbric myriads again scaled the Alps, and poured their famished deluge over our devastated frontiers? Hath Mithridates trodden on the neck of Pompey? By the great gods! hath Carthage revived from her ashes? is Hannibal, or a greater one than Hannibal, again thundering at our gates, with Punic ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... when the short, mid-winter day was in its decline, and we were all feeling stiff and cold and half-famished, our commander thought proper to bring the great lake battle, with awful slaughter of our barbarian foes, to an end, and we wearily trudged home in our soaking clothes and squeaking shoes. We were too tired to pay much heed to the little sermon we had expected, and glad to get into dry ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... were in that hut, or they would have come to help us, for they bees very koind people. There must have been a day and a night that passed, I think, of which I know nothing. It was all a dream. When I got up from my illness, I found my boy dead—and the others with famished looks. Then I had to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various

... of starvation, lay the iron-hearted monster of steel and steam, implacable, insatiable, huge—its entrails gorged with the life blood that it sucked from an entire commonwealth, its ever hungry maw glutted with the harvests that should have fed the famished bellies of the whole world of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... scoured almost unopposed the neighbouring counties. The troops of Cole, Hamilton, the Stewarts, Chichesters, and Conways, found little opposition, and gave no quarter. Sir William Cole, among his claims of service rendered to the State, enumerated "7,000 of the rebels famished to death," within a circuit of a few miles from Enniskillen. The disheartened and disorganized natives were seriously deliberating a wholesale emigration to the Scottish highlands, when a word of magic effect was whispered from ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... will force the people to eat hay;" and without any order from the constituted authorities, some peasants, neighbours of the old minister, arrest him, take him to Paris, his son-in-law experiences the same fate, and the famished populace immolates both ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... and the party sat down to lunch shortly after one, half-famished but happy, little dreaming of the thrilling adventure which was to befall them ere ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... discovered; the men who cast me into the sea and who must have heard the cry I uttered, will be questioned. Then boats filled with armed soldiers will pursue the wretched fugitive. The cannon will warn every one to refuse shelter to a man wandering about naked and famished. The police of Marseilles will be on the alert by land, whilst the governor pursues me by sea. I am cold, I am hungry. I have lost even the knife that saved me. O my God, I have suffered enough surely! Have pity on me, and do for me what I am unable ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: "What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit harakiri?" We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms to feed them. How eagerly and happily ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... himself. Could mortal lips give birth to melody like this? It was the sighing of summer winds through rustling leaves, the music of crystal brooks on stony courses, the full-throated worship of birds. Joseph listened, enthralled, like a famished pilgrim in the desert. His simple soul, attuned to harmonies of the woodland, leaped in answer; his fancy, starved by years of churchly rigor, quickened like a prisoner at the light of day. Not until the singer had ceased did he resume ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... courses which had beggared him before. Gambling and debauchery soon blunted his passions, and emptied his purse. Again his boon companions, finding him without a broken cowrie, drove him from their doors, he stole and was flogged for theft; and lastly, half famished, he fled the city. Then he said to himself, "I must go to my father-in-law, and make the excuse that a grandson has been born to him, and that I have come to offer ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... well as heart could desire, and the Maid bids you follow her, if you may, to the taking of Paris, for there she says will be your one chance to win your spurs. And now let me eat and drink, for the heat is great, the ways dusty, and I half famished. Thereafter ask me what you will, and you, Elliot, come not between a hungry ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... of a hodge-podge. The writer who is our authority for these culinary details, informs us that he had seen the dish devoured with eagerness while the original letters written upon the parchment were still legible.[1309] But the urgent necessities of their situation did not suffer the half-famished inhabitants to stop here. With the proverbial ingenuity of their nation, they turned their attention to the parchment on old drums, and subjected to the skilful hands of cooks the discarded hoofs, horns, and bones of animals, the harness of horses, and even refuse scraps ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... idea turning the old church into a caf," Barbara remarked to Benjamin Clymer. "A sort of casting bread upon the waters of famished Washington. I wonder if they ever turn water ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... slowly eating with his gums, began to feel famished; he seized a plate and helped himself largely to a ragout, and then demolished a partridge, bones and all, calling out that his teeth were coming back to him. He eat, laughed, and cried for joy, for half an hour, while the others remained ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... to cast in his lot with them, and end this life of secrecy, and distrust from all around him save one, and his loyal love ill requited even by that one. It grieved him keenly that one of his brothers should have been repulsed from his tent; an absolutely famished longing for fraternal intercourse gained possession of him, and as he lay on his pallet that night in the dark, he even shed tears at the thought of the greeting and embrace that ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... skeletons of ponies robbed of their flesh, in the trees stripped of bark for food, and the ground dug over for roots. To these proofs were now added kettles and blankets which the enfeebled women could no longer carry, and the dead bodies of famished ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... patriotic army had to endure. "Where was the man," he said, "who had an American heart in his bosom who would not have thrown open his fields, his barbs, his cellars, the doors of his house, the portals of his breast, to have received with open arms the meanest soldier in that little band of famished patriots? Where is the man? There he stands; and whether the heart of an American beats in his bosom, you gentlemen are to judge." He then painted the surrender of the British troops, their humiliation and dejection, the triumph of the patriot band, the shouts of victory, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... headstrong Junot, nicknamed "the tempest" by the army, was too artless to catch the prince by guile; but he hurried his soldiers over mountains and through flooded gorges until, on November 30th, 1,500 tattered, shoeless, famished grenadiers straggled into Lisbon—to find that the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... ould Matthew is as obstinate a neger as ever famished his stomach. What's he doing ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... Partridge, with most eager transport. "And is it really no more than that? I love a puppet-show of all the pastimes upon earth. Do, good sir, let us tarry and see it. Besides, I am quite famished to death; for it is now almost dark, and I have not eat a morsel since three o'clock in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... he said as he got up from the fire round which he and the three officers were sitting; "you must remember that these poor fellows are desperate. Of course you and I know that they can do themselves no good by attacking castles and burning chateaux, but were we in their place—famished, despairing, and ignorant—we should doubtless do the same. And although, with men as well disciplined as ours, there would be little chance of the peasants overpowering us, they may trust in their numbers, and would believe that if they could destroy us, the whole country ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... from some of the sailors. Sandy, then on light duty, opened up a business as a curio agent. He swapped Turkish rifles, bullet clips, and other things for pieces of bread, a tin of jam, a tasty Maconochie, and some tea. This was a godsend to his famished pals in the trenches. Bill also wrote a letter home to Mrs. McGinnes, his ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... as the shyness came it disappeared again, for Lucy's eyes fell on her, and, her face alight with pleasure, Lucy came forward with arms outstretched in welcome. "Why, you poor little tired thing, you," she cried, kissing her warmly, "you must be famished! Come in, do. I was quite frightened about you, for I've been expecting you this hour and more, and then when Mr. Darbie came, and brought only your box, it seemed as if I wasn't ever going to see you. Come in, ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... at last, her face was changed; there was a keen, famished look in her eyes, and her movements were steady and direct. Her nature was very unlike Bosio's, for she was able to drive her will into action, as it were, and she could be sure that it would not turn and bend, and disappoint her. But, for ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... hauled on deck was a pitiable object. But even in his half famished condition and with the great beard that he wore there was something very familiar—strangely so—about him to the boys. Frank was the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... treacherously murdered them all. Those in the smaller boat rounded Cape Chudley and were driven by the wind among the islands near Okak. Here they were seen by Eskimoes belonging to the station. Emaciated and famished, they feared a cruel death, but to their astonishment the natives helped them ashore, took them into their little hut of sods, wrapped them in skins, and supplied them with food. Very beautiful to those ship-wrecked mariners sounded the singing and very solemn the prayers at the morning and evening ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... this, sir? Do you think it possible for these blood-drunk ruffians to roam the Mohawk and Sacandaga valleys and respect you and yours just because you say you are neutral? Turn loose a pack of famished panthers in a common pasture and mark your sheep with your device and see how many are alive ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... go it gently! Consider the day is 'ot, I'm almost out of breath, and faint for want of food. I've come all the way from Angle-tear, as we say in France, and lost my breakfast on the wogaye. Where is there an inn where I can recruit my famished frame? What's this?" looking up at a sign, "'Done a boar in a manger,' what does this mean?—where's my French dictionary? I've heard that boar is very good to eat." "Yes, but this boar is to drink," said a friend on the right; "but you must not ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... traces of his thoughts as he executed his scheme of vengeance. He discovered her villainy, he would have no scandal, he was disgusted with life, so he dropped out of it with the prize for which she had married him, and left her like a famished wolf in the desert. It would have satisfied him to have seen her rage and dismay, but he was not one of the kind ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... uninhabited island some miles from San Francisco, tied hand and foot and fastened tight to stakes driven in the ground and left to die. Two days later he was found by friends, purely by accident and released, famished and worn out, but he refused to tell who his captors were, and again become a victim of the terrible Highbinders, the curse ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... And whether famished evening wolves had mangled Albert so, Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe, Or whether to that forest lodge, beyond the mountains blue, He went to dwell with her, the friends who ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... candlesticks were recovered near Lake Memphremagog, but the statue has never been laid hold upon. The spirits of the famished men were wont, for many winters, to cry in the woods, and once a hunter, camped on the side of Mount Adams, was awakened at midnight by the notes of an organ. The mists were rolling off, and he found that he had gone ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... stranger to obtain a breakfast in London was to go to a hotel and engage a room. Even at railroad terminals, where the refreshment-rooms were just beginning to be swept and garnished, and the waitresses were yawning behind the big urns, they did not regard the famished traveller with any enthusiasm. It was felt that a stranger wanting food at that hour had been up to no good. The author, being a skilled Londoner, was put to no such inconvenience. It was his habit, at intervals, to write special articles ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... turns rainy and hot; and the men, tired and famished, were fast falling ill. On the twenty-second they approached Scioto, called by the French St. Yotoc, or Sinioto, a large Shawanoe town at the mouth of the river which bears the same name. Greatly doubting what welcome awaited them, they filled their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... little moment; the claims of official rank were accidental and precarious; and the candidates, who might aspire to ascend the vacant throne could be supported only by the consciousness of personal merit, or by the hopes of popular favor. But the situation of a famished army, encompassed on all sides by a host of Barbarians, shortened the moments of grief and deliberation. In this scene of terror and distress, the body of the deceased prince, according to his own directions, was decently embalmed; and, at the dawn of day, the generals ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Prince placed several fine bonbons upon the baby-house table. The King, too near starving to care much for good manners, carved with his sword, and ladies and gentlemen seized slices in their hands and ate as if famished. A wine drop furnished them with delicious cordial to drink, and thus the Court feasted so merrily that it would have done one's heart good to ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no home,—among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... in care, so now and then I may have leave to feed my famished eyes With one short passing glance, and sigh my vows: This, and no more, my lord, is all the passion ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... set forth the attractions of a table to which forest, mountain-stream, or river had contributed delights. Sometimes the grotesque imagination of some wild fellow would conjure up a feast so full of horror that a famished cannibal might well protest. In striking contrast with this was the gentle pathos of word and manner as some boy told of dinner at the old farm-house among the hills, where mother poured out the fragrant ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... affairs of the island to a narrow compass, I was preparing to go on board the ship, when the young man I had taken out of the famished ship's company came to me, and told me he understood I had a clergyman with me, and that I had caused the Englishmen to be married to the savages; that he had a match too, which he desired might be finished before I went, between two ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... Perpignan, at Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of the Pope's: a continual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole face of France;—testifying how electric it grows. Add only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives; that continual running-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone and basis ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the first land she made, after rowing all night, was Fifeness, a distance of about fourteen miles. The weather having cleared in the morning, the crew stood off again for the floating light, and got on board in a half-famished and much exhausted state, having been constantly rowing for ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the back of a cafe—the legal Bohemian with documents reeking of wormwood bitters and white neckcloths spotted with champoreau; the ushers, the attorneys, all the locusts of stamped paper, meagre and famished, who eat up the colonist body and boots—ay, to the very straps of them, and leave him peeled to the core like an Indian cornstalk, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... Not a motion made Nokomis, Not a gesture Laughing Water; Not a change came o'er their features; Only Minnehaha softly Whispered, saying, "They are famished; Let them do what best delights them; Let them ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... now allay the fury of that heat, Which, raging in my entrails, eats me up? You ghastly devils of the ninefold Styx, You damned ghosts of joyless Acheron, You mournful souls, vexed in Abyss' vaults, You coalblack devils of Avernus' pond, Come, with your fleshhooks rent my famished arms, These arms that have sustained their master's life. Come, with your razors rip my bowels up, With your sharp fireforks crack my sterved bones: Use me as you will, so Humber may not live. Accursed gods, that rule the starry poles, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... the doctor was then enabled to escape. After a toilsome travel of twenty-one days, during which time he subsisted altogether on wild gooseberries, young nettles, a raw terrapin and two young birds, he arrived safely at Fort McIntosh—meagre, emaciated and almost famished. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... this fearful thought in a manner highly fortifying, the tender hue flowed back again into her famished cheeks and lips, and a softer brilliance glistened from the depth of her dark eyes. She gave me one little shrunken hand, and I could not help ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... soldiers of Xenophon once we spied the sea. But the cry "Thalassa" was denied us. Eventually we turned back, and tried keeping the hill on the right. This was as perplexing as keeping it on the left had been. A pair of famished explorers, hungry enough to eat canned tuna-fish and crackers with relish, reached a little town inland from Mandelieu about seven o'clock that night with no clear knowledge of from where ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... seen in an Atlanta paper, obtained, as usual, through a contraband source, an article clipped from the "Cincinnati Commercial," giving notice of the arrival of Porter and Wollam at Corinth, in a very wretched and famished condition. This was most gratifying to us, but of the others we had, as yet, received no reliable information. The Provost-marshal told us that three of them had been shot and left in the woods, but judging by the source, we considered ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... of humanity. He had not dreamed that such beings existed upon the earth. Sometimes, unaware of the circumstances and the danger they courted, they caught up a child wherewith to deceive him, if it might be, generally a pitiable, puny thing, swarming with vermin, half famished and forlorn. But Julian was dubious how ill treatment and lack of nourishment might have transformed the heir of the proud Archibald Royston, and in each instance he summoned Lillian through long journeys, tortured with alternations of hope and suspense, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... daughters—when all is glory, gallopade, and Gunter—when Rubini warbles smallest, and Lablanche is heard as thunder on the stairs—speak, tradesmen, ye who best can tell, the closeness that has catered for that feast; tell it out, ye famished milliners, ground down to sixpence on a ball-dress bill; whisper it, ye footmen, with your wages ever due; let Gath, let Askelon re-echo with the truth, that extortion is the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... timbers trembled in their mortices, and the walls shook upon their foundations. From time to time a blast would hurl itself against my window with wild shrieks, and from my bed I imagined I could see through the panes the bloodshot eyes of a band of famished wolves. In the brief intervals when this outside tumult subsided, strange murmurs came from the interior of the castle; the wainscoting gave forth dismal creakings;—there was not a crack in the partitions, nor a fissure in the ceiling from which did not issue a sigh, or hoarse groans. Then ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... later, a half-famished horse dragged a gipsy caravan into Crozant. Its driver obtained leave to stable it at the end of the village, in an old deserted cart-shed. In addition to the driver, who was none other than Valmeras, there were three young men, who ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... out foremost, His look was high and bold; His corslet was of bison's hide, Plated with steel and gold. As glares the famished eagle From the Digentian rock On a choice lamb that bounds alone Before Bandusia's flock, Herminius glared on Sextus, And came with eagle speed, Herminius on black Auster, Brave champion on brave steed; In his right hand the broadsword That kept the bridge so ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... against all deceits and dangers, which might be layed priuily for them. The maner of that people (they sayd) they better knew, and had more experience thereof then he: alledging moreouer their wearied bodies, their tired horses, their famished souldiers, and the insufficiency also of their number, which was not able to withstand the multitude of the enemies, especially at this present brunt, in which the aduersaries did well see the whole state of their dominion now to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... suffering. It was characteristic of woman, that she should have been the first to build and endow an hospital. It has been said that wherever a human being is in suffering, his sighs call a woman to his side. When Mungo Park, lonely, friendless, and famished, after being driven forth from an African village by the men, was preparing to spend the night under a tree, exposed to the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded, a poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the field, took compassion ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... for her family, has filled the cells as her fancy prompted, or rather according to the number of ripe ovules contained in her ovaries at the time of the laying. If food be over-plentiful, the brood will be all the better for it and will grow bigger and stronger; if food be scarce, the famished youngsters will not die, but will remain smaller. Indeed, with both the larva and the full grown insect, I have often observed a difference in size which varies according to the density of the population, the members of a small colony being ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... humble factories; and their principal establishment of Caffa [48] was besieged without effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy, the Greeks were oppressed by these haughty merchants, who fed, or famished, Constantinople, according to their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the fishery, and even the toll, of the Bosphorus; and while they derived from these objects a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... and blood they think I am? Me that's just come back from a journey of a hundred miles, and sent off again like this with but a taste of sleep and little food, and Corporal Byng sittin' there at Fort Desire with a pipe in his mouth and the fat on his back like a porpoise. It's famished I am with hunger, and thirty miles yet to do; and she, standin' there with a six months' welcome in her eye. . . . It's in the interest of Justice if I halt at Galbraith's Place for half-an-hour, bedad! The blackguard hid away there at Soldier's Knee will be arrested all the sooner; for horse ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... unmarked in Australia, two of the most disastrous expeditions in the annals of exploration started during its course. One, Leichhardt's, as we have just seen, vanished, and all must have perished. Of the other, under Kennedy, two ghastly famished spectres, that had once been white men, and a naked blackfellow, alone were ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... sobbed. It was the opening of the flood-gates of ten years of solitude: for, since Olivier's death, he had been utterly alone. Her letter gave the word of resurrection to his heart that was so famished for tenderness. Tenderness!... He thought he had put it from him: he had been forced to learn how to do without it! Now he felt how sorely he needed it, and the great stores of love that ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... stream, that contained two men who had come from the Illinois country to hunt upon the Yellowstone. These were the first whites seen since April 13, 1805, a period of sixteen months. As a matter of course Clark was famished for news from the United States; but what he got from the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... your camp air is keen; I myself am famished. Pasties, cold fricassee, old wines—there is my bill of fare? Pray bring ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... the Emperor, he advanced into the forests with three hundred men. Nothing could exceed their sufferings. Nowhere could they find the gold they came to seek. The village of Appalache, where they hoped to gain a rich booty, offered nothing but a few mean wigwams. The horses gave out, and the famished soldiers fed upon their flesh. The men sickened, and the Indians unceasingly harassed their march. At length, after two hundred and eighty leagues [5] of wandering, they found themselves on the northern shore of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... went hand in hand for the uext two days and the famished, worn-out company came to the coast. The wounded men were half-delirious once more for lack of proper attention, and the hardships of travel. But the ill-wind had spent its force. Bray's instructions were to place his charges on board ship at San Fernando de Union, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of others you hardly wanted anything for yourself. He told us a wonderful story of Buddha giving himself to the famished tigress to save her and her little ones from starving. And he said you were like Buddha. That is what ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... full evening dress. Knowing that the dinner was only for us six, we never dreamed it would be a full dress affair. I had no appetite. It was quite twenty minutes past eight before we sat down to dinner. At six I could have eaten a hearty meal. I had a bit of bread-and-butter at that hour, feeling famished, and I expect that partly spoiled ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... quickly appeared before him, eager to relate what he had done with Prospero's brother and the king of Naples. Ariel said he had left them almost out of their senses with fear, at the strange things he had caused them to see and hear. When fatigued with wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... again and again over his military firmness. He allowed the women and children to leave the city, then the ecclesiastics, then the starving poor, then the starving rich. Each of these acts of generosity added to the strength of his foes. The famished Leaguers were now in a condition to make but a feeble resistance. Henry was urged to take the city by storm. He could easily do this, but fearful slaughter would be the inevitable result. For this reason Henry ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... and as thy faith has merited." Maddened to witness this deed of barbarism, Gerbino, as if courting death, recked no more of the arrows and the stones, but drew alongside the ship, and, despite the resistance of her crew, boarded her; and as a famished lion ravens amongst a herd of oxen, and tearing and rending, now one, now another, gluts his wrath before he appeases his hunger, so Gerbino, sword in hand, hacking and hewing on all sides among the Saracens, did ruthlessly slaughter not ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... had heard his mother sing to his sister, when he was checked by the sight of a long skinny mongrel like a hairy worm, that lay cowering and shivering beside a heap of ashes put down for the dust-cart—such a dry hopeless heap that the famished little dog did not care to search it: some little warmth in it, I presume, had kept him near it. Clare's own indigence made him the more sorry for the indigent, and he felt very sorry for this member of the family; but he had neither work nor alms to give him, therefore strode on. The dog ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... consider him an ingenuous old soul?" she asked. And I thought there was something rather metallic in her voice. I might have replied with intelligence if she had given me a chance, but for some reason she chose to drop the subject. "You must be famished, and I am dying to hear about your experiences. You must not omit a single ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... a king of sweet content at least, But now from out my kingdom banished; I was chief guest at fair dame pleasure's feast, But now I am for want of succour famished; I was a saint and heaven was my rest, But now cast down into the lowest hell. Vile caitiffs may not live among the blest, Nor blessed men amongst cursed caitiffs dwell. Thus am I made an exile of a king; Thus choice of meats to want of food is changed; Thus ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... uninteresting lot, quickly went down; all save one, a coarse, swaggering youth with too much self-possession whom I need not name. He, too, sprang over the rail, but, nearing the beach, a justly enraged providence intervened and he was bitten neatly in two by a famished and adroit shark. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... she was breathing, however, and breathing fast. Why, it was half-past eleven before she got back down-town from her tailor, and she bought a wedding present till one, and she was just famished and ran to a tea-room, but she had hardly touched a mouthful when she remembered there was a girl from out of town who had come in to spend a month doing nothing and had to be helped, but though she rushed to the 'phone she couldn't get her friend before it was time to catch her suburban ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... pilgrim, I have a struggle all the time. I never know what it is to be free from pain or poverty. If it were not for Honey Rock, I certainly should have famished ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... well, can manifestly see that they are few who can attain to the enjoyment of Knowledge, though it is desired by all, and almost innumerable are the fettered ones who live for ever famished ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... like Nellie—everything that was bright, and brave, and good. She will be here in the morning to say good-by. Now, Mrs. Stuart, if you have any compassion on a famished only son, hurry ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... rich short- cake, baked in irons, very thin and crisp, and then split in two and buttered whence their name. A pleasant meal was that. Whatever an epicure might have thought of the tea, to Ellen, in her famished state, it was delicious; and no epicure could have found fault with the cold ham and the butter and the cakes but far better than all was the spirit of kindness that was there. Ellen feasted on that more than on anything else. If her host and hostess were not ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... leave. Garrison paced up and down the office floor for half an hour. He was very much in hopes that word might come from Dorothy as to where she had chosen a room. The afternoon was gone, and he was famished. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... there to meet them. Not that at that time things were so bad as they became afterwards. Men were not dying on the road-side, nor as yet had the apathy of want produced its terrible cure for the agony of hunger. The time had not yet come when the famished living skeletons might be seen to reject the food which could no longer serve ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... a man is famished, he is not complex, he runs to the baker's. You can have no conception how I perish! And I cannot be contradicted-I claim you-I have the right-I am the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... and contemptuously thrown aside by fifty dirty Arabs (I speak as an eye-witness); he buys a few handfuls of these horrors for three or four sous, and forthwith—hey, presto!—they are transformed into a "ragout a la bretonne" for the famished traveller. Tunisia is a sheep-rearing country—there are sixty thousand sheep in the controle of Gafsa alone—but you may live there a lifetime before seeing a leg of mutton at a country table d'hote. For all the "gigots" that ever appear at my host's entertainment, one might ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... float like ships upon its surface. The cheerful sight invigorated them, and, though their limbs tottered from exhaustion, they toiled on, and, just as night was setting in, they reached their home, faint with travel, and almost famished with hunger and cold. The limbs of one of these men, John Goodman, were so swollen by exertion and the cold that they were obliged to cut his shoes from his feet, and it was a long time before he was again able to walk. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... charged forward with this mass he had thus worked up to the wildest enthusiasm. The enemy halted when they saw these columns, in flight a moment before, now advancing to the attack, and Hill burst upon his late pursuers like a famished lion. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... famished," the sailor said as he came up. "I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. How on earth did you ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... The party then all came up. The war chief Kewaynokwut Said, "Do not be afraid. This party you see are my young men; and I command them. They will not do you any harm, nor hurt you." Some of the party soon began to pillage. They appeared to be half famished, first taking their provisions, which consisted of half a bag of flour, half a bag of corn, a few biscuits, and half a hog. The biscuits they immediately eat, and then began to rob the clothing, which they parted ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... the chaparral yonder." He had not taken the chair she pointed out to him, but stood—leaning with the heaviness of fatigue against the shelf that served as a table—looking at her in the lamp-light. She saw how pale and haggard and half-famished-looking he was, and turned promptly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... morning! Ah! We wait indeed For daylight, we who toss about through stress Of vacant-armed desires and emptiness Of all the warm, warm touches that we need, And the warm kisses upon which we feed Our famished lips in fancy! May God bless The starved lips of us with but one caress Warm as the yearning blood our poor hearts bleed...! A wild prayer—! Bite thy pillow, praying so— Toss this side, and whirl that, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... cold, and he thought he would replenish the fire on his hearth, for he always had the feeling that at any moment they might come wearily climbing up the trail, famished and cold. Any night he might hear the "Halloo" of the big man's voice. In the shed where he had piled the husked corn lay wood cut in lengths for the fireplace, and taking a pine torch he stooped to collect ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... regions; of shipwrecked sailors on frozen seas; of lonely travellers laying down their weary heads on pillows of snow, never to rise again; of homeless wanderers, outcasts from society, many with famished babes at their breasts, cowering under dark arches, or warming themselves at ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... and commanded, with her hands upon his shoulders, and he let himself be persuaded to taste the bread and meat. After a few mouthfuls, taken with obvious disrelish, she detected the awakening fervour of a famished man, and knew she would have ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... parlour. Not a trace of the well-bred refinement which had once characterized Randal's air and person was visible. His dress bespoke the last stage of that terrible decay which is significantly called the "shabby genteel." His mien was that of the skulking, timorous, famished vagabond. As he took off his greasy tattered hat, he exhibited, though still young in years, the signs of premature old age. His hair, once so fine and silken, was of a harsh iron-gray, bald in ragged patches; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of his poor pony told him that the wild animal had been a very famished tiger. B. returned to his own bungalow a wiser man, and told his servants that, had he taken their advice, he would not have suffered such an adventure or the loss of his pony. He rewarded the villagers for their kindness and hospitality and for a long time ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee

... that eating-house. Of course no one ever noticed 'em much, being too famished and busy. You only knew in a general way that females was passing the food along. But Angus actually did notice Ellabelle, though it must have been at the end of the meal, mebbe when she was pouring the third ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... by that time to be very nearly dawn, and the weather did not improve. The rain came down in squalls and sheets and the wind screamed through, it, and we were famished as well as wet to the skin—all, that is to say, except Tugendheim, who had enjoyed the shelter of the hut. The teeth of many of the men were chattering. Yet we stood about for an hour more, because it was too dark and too dangerous to ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as slender as the thread of a famished spider, and as sharp as the edge of a sword, shall be passed by the believer, he will be welcomed into the gardens of delight by black-eyed Houris, beautiful nymphs, not made of common clay, but of pure essence and odors, free from all blemish, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... starved, there was every possibility of our being reduced to nakedness. This was no pleasant prospect, running out of tropical latitudes towards England, in the month of January. In the course of six weeks, such a ragged, woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled together in one of his Majesty's vessels of war. The shifts we were obliged to have recourse to were quite amusing, to all but the shiftmakers. The only good hat, and wearable ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... been, that which she could not be now—it must exist somewhere. Singularly childish it seemed even to herself, this perpetual obsession by the desire for happiness,—inarticulate, unformed desire. It haunted her, night and morning, haunted her as the desire for food haunts the famished, the desire for action the prisoned. It urged on her footsteps in the still afternoons as she wandered over this vast waste of houseless blocks. Up and down the endless checker-board of empty streets and avenues she had roamed, gleaning what joys were to be had in the metallic atmosphere, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Famished" :   starved, hungry, esurient, ravenous



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com