Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out some place, and fixing the staple of stupidity and stolidity therein.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Nottinghamshire.
Staple; a city or town, where merchants jointly lay up their commodities for the better uttering of them by the great; a public storehouse.—Phillips, New World of Words.
Starve. This word, the O.E. ‘steorfan,’ the German ‘sterben,’ to die, is only by comparatively modern use restricted to dying by cold or by hunger; in this restriction of use, resembling the French ‘noyer,’ to kill by drowning, while ‘necare,’ from which it descends, is to kill by any manner of death. But innumerable words are thus like rivers, which once pouring their waters through many channels, have now left dry and abandoned them all, save one, or, as in the present instance it happens, save two.
For wele or woo sche wol him not forsake:
Sche is not wery him to love and serve,
Theigh that he lay bedred til that he sterve.
Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale.
But, if for me ye fight, or me will serve,
Not this rude kind of battell, nor these armes
Are meet, the which doe men in bale to sterve.