For the English sentence "I am starving to death", in the meaning of "I am very hungry", (rather than of a real pathological condition), is there an equivalent in German (using the word "death")?
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5 Answers
German has a separate word, a more concise form for "starve to death": verhungern.
It doesn't have the word "Tod" in it, but it implies it directly. Being hungry is "hungrig" and the verb (being hungry) "hungern", but that just means starving without immediately fatal consequence. Of course one can say "ich hungere mich zu Tode", but that's not as idiomatic and implies that starving to death being at your own hands, while "verhungern" is due to the lack of available food by whatever causes.
Another option is to use
sterben vor Hunger
or archaicly "des Hungers sterben" which literally means "to die because of hunger".
In a colloquial, spoken context I most often would use a wording like where the words in parenthesis might be added for emphasis or left out:
Ich bin (grad) (voll) am Verhungern
Ich will Euch hier (ja) nicht (ganz) verhungern lassen
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8Völlig unbelegt würde ich schätzen, dass "Ich sterbe vor Hunger" die verbreitetste Form ist. Commented Mar 12 at 11:21
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3Can you starve not to death? I thought starve was the literal translation of verhungern which implies "to death". If starve means verhungern then starve to death is "doppelt gemoppelt" (colloquially: ein Pleonasmus) and none of the translations captures that. Commented Mar 12 at 21:47
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5@TomTom There is in German a difference between "hungern" and "verhungern". "hungern" just means to go without food and being hungry. "verhungern" implies going so hungry that it impacts your health negatively, ultimately fatally, thus it does imply death. And then there is "fasten", which is the type of purposefully and self-imposed going hungry for whatever reason (fasting). Commented Mar 12 at 23:30
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2I think "verhungern" literally translates one-to-one to "starve", and I think the English expression "I am starving to death" is sort of a tautology since starving by itself already implies you are close to dying– IvoCommented Mar 13 at 9:50
The most common translation of "I'm starving to death" would be
Ich sterbe vor Hunger
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2Despite knowing both words for decades, I never realised until now that Ger. sterben is a direct cognate of Eng. starve.– PLLCommented Mar 13 at 13:14
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1@PLL German has kept the original (and wider) Germanic meaning of "to become stiff" (i.e. dying for whatever reason), while English specialized it to "die from hunger". – So, it's actually a false friend.– tofroCommented Mar 13 at 15:42
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1In English there's a common term for a corpse, which is a "stiff." So there might still be a connection from the German word after all. Commented Mar 14 at 2:02
Another option is Ich verhungere or *Ich bin am Verhungern.
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You can use the verb "umkommen". One of its meanings is to die, but it can also be used to express that something is very hard to bear.
- Ich komme vor Hunger um.
- Ich komme vor Hunger fast um.
- Ich komme halb vor Hunger um.
"Umkommen" can also be combined with Hitze (heat), Kälte (cold), Langeweile (boredom) etc.
"Ich habe Kohldampf." is one I've seen before. It could be out of date though but I'm not sure.
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