starveacre

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of starve-acre.

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

   1953, Agriculture - Volume 60, page 252

   2 more examples

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

   1924, Bath and West and Southern Counties Society, Journal, page 9

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

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

comparative more starveacre · superlative most starveacre

1. alternativeAlternative form of starve-acre.

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

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1984, Arthur Bryant, Set in a silver sea

   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.

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