Star*va"tion (?), n.
The act of starving, or the state of being starved.
⇒ This word was first used, according to Horace Walpole, by Henry Dundas, the first Lord Melville, in a speech on American affairs in 1775, which obtained for him the nickname of Starvation Dundas.
"Starvation, we are also told, belongs to the class of 'vile compounds' from being a mongrel; as if English were not full of mongrels, and if it would not be in distressing straits without them." Fitzed. Hall.
© Webster 1913.