starve-acren.adj.

1820 Further Rep. Commissioners inquiring conc. Charities 344 in Parl. Papers V. 1 John Stephens holds Munksford, the land below the Yoe, and a piece called Starve Acre, upon Yarley Hill.

1844 Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc. 5 597 Previous to Mr. Davis's occupation, a field, termed Starve Acre, from its unproductive quality, would scarcely grow anything.

1962 P. O'Brian Richard Temple ii. 34 When Gay had helped him move his books they went out to a place beyond the cricket pitches called Starve-Acre.

1969 J. B. Hilton Death in Midwinter xii. 96 Starve-acre, they called our farm. Bloody good name for it, too.

1855 Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc. 15 207 The clays are swarmed with starve-acre (Ranunculus arvensis), and the clivers or burrs (Galium aparine).

1896 Jrnl. Bot., Brit. & Foreign 34 364 The dialectal French ‘bramefouam’..is paralleled by our ‘hunger weed’ and ‘starve-acre’.

1961 E. Salisbury Weeds & Aliens vi. 177 Some of its other names have been provoked by its pestilential character as a weed of southern Britain, especially on calcareous soils. Examples are Hellweed, Hunger-weed and Starveacre.

1891 T. Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles xlii, in Graphic 14 Nov. 574/1 'Tis a starve-acre place. Corn and swedes are all they grow.

1955 Illustr. London News 19 Mar. 492/2 Punitive expedition after expedition of English knights advanced up their mountain valleys only to withdraw, famished, horseless and empty-handed, after a few months in that starve-acre land.

1998 J. E. Kibler Our Fathers' Fields xvi. 368 They were just trying to get by like everybody else during these ragged, starve-acre days.

2008 J. Vernon Lucky Billy ii. 17 ‘It hasn't been a fort in ten years,’ I said. ‘More like a starve-acre town.’