starveacre

starveacre

English

Noun

starveacre (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of starve-acre
   • 1924, Bath and West and Southern Counties Society, Journal, page 9:

     Starveacre is most injured when spraying is not done until the weed has just begun to flower, when the plants are usually killed outright.

   • 1934, Harold Cecil Long, Weed Suppression by Fertilizers and Chemicals, page 18:

     Corn Buttercup (or Starveacre), Hoary Pepperwort (Chalk Weed or Thanet Weed) and Spotted Medick afford notable instances of this.

   • 1953, Agriculture - Volume 60, page 252:

     But our modern weed-killers are master of the charlock, the poppy and the starveacre.

Adjective

starveacre (comparative more starveacre, superlative most starveacre)

1. Alternative form of starve-acre
   • 1984, Arthur Bryant, Set in a silver sea:

     Broken only by brief, grudging truces and attended since the middle of the century by periodic visitations of plague and famine, the long war had almost completely stripped their rocky, starveacre land of what little wealth it possessed.

   • 2009, Patrick Wright, A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London, →ISBN, page 187:

     The agricultural subsidies may have been in decline, but even the most starveacre farm is likely to include a trickling bog and the hills were suddenly alive with the sound of water running into plastic bottles.

   • 2011, Vesta Robson, Wessex Revisited, →ISBN, page 127:

     “Of course, Tess! Is this Flintcombe Ash then? It doesn't look like a 'starveacre' place, as Hardy puts it.”