Why this word is great
FAMISH — [Verb] To reduce to, or die from, extreme hunger; to cause to suffer severely from lack of food. From Middle English famisshe, from famen ("to starve"), from Old French afamer, from Vulgar Latin *affamāre, from Latin famēs ("hunger"). Unlike "hunger," which names the common pang of appetite, or "starve," which has colloquially softened to mean mere eagerness, to famish is to enact or endure a specific, acute, and often externally imposed extremity. It is the desperate focus on an empty larder, the hollowing of cheeks in a besieged garrison, the cold calculation that targets granaries before gates—the slow, quiet victory of absence over life, a word that speaks not of missing a meal, but of being erased by its absence.