English

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Etymology

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

Adjective

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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.

Translations

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