foodless
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English fodeles, equivalent to food + -less.
Adjective
[edit]foodless (not comparable)
- (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.
- 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,