8. Burwood Place, Hyde Park.
Starvation, an Americanism.—Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless quite true that this word, now unhappily so common on every tongue, as representing the condition of so many of the sons and daughters of the sister lands of Great Britain and Ireland, is not to be found in our own English dictionaries; neither in Todd's Johnson, published in 1826, nor in Richardson's, published ten years later, nor in Smart's—Walker remodelled—published about the same time as Richardson's. It is Webster who has the credit of importing it from his country into this; and in a supplement issued a few years ago, Mr. Smart adopted it as "a trivial word, but in very common, and at present good use."
What a lesson might Mr. Trench read us, that it should be so!
Our older poets, to the time of Dryden, used the compound "hunger-starved." We now say starved with cold. Chaucer speaks of Christ as "He that starf for our redemption," of Creseide "which well nigh starf for feare;" Spenser, of arms "which doe men in bale to sterve." (See Starve in Richardson.) In the Pardoneres Tale, v. 12799:
"Ye (yea), sterve he shall, and that in lesse while
Than thou wilt gon a pas not but a mile;
This poison is so strong and violent."
And again, v. 12822:
"It happed him
To take the botelle there the poison was,