foodless

English

Etymology

From Middle English fodeles, equivalent to food +‎ -less.

Adjective

foodless (not comparable)

  1. (rare) Lacking food; without food.
    • c. 1807, William Blake, Vala, or The Four Zoas in Blake: Complete Poems, edited by W. H. Stevenson, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2007, p. 321, lines 187-8,
      Why does the raven cry aloud & no eye pities her? / Why fall the sparrow & the robin in the foodless winter?
    • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter III, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz [], →OCLC:
      You have spent your last eighty centimes on half a litre of milk, and are boiling it over the spirit lamp. While it boils a bug runs down your forearm; you give the bug a flick with your nail, and it falls, plop! straight into the milk. There is nothing for it but to throw the milk away and go foodless.
    • 1954 December, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, pages 853-854:
      In 1938-1939, while I may have been no better off in time than in 1954, I should at least have had the use of a Pullman car in which to obtain a meal, instead of having to spend over 2½ hr. on a foodless and drinkless journey of no more than 77½ miles.

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