a. [f. FOOD sb. + -LESS.]
1. Without food. a. Of persons or animals: Having no food.
a. 1400–50. Alexander, 2155. Lo, oure folez bene in fere · for fodeles to dye.
a. 1541. Wyatt, Poems, Ps. xxxvii. 70. Nor yet [shall] his seed foodless seen for to be.
1725. Pope, Odyss., XVIII. 413.
| Both constrain’d to wield, | |
| Foodless, the scythe along the burthen’d field. |
1821. Shelley, Prometh. Unb., I. 170.
| Foodless toads | |
| Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled. |
1880. Earl Dunraven, A Colorado Sketch, in 19th Cent., VIII. Sept., 454. Not a sign of anything did we see till our entirely foodless stomachs and the nearly shadowless trees indicated that it was past noon.
fig. 1887. Swinburne, Locrine, IV. i. 105.
| So shall fear, mistrust, and jealous hate | |
| Lie foodless, if not fangless. |
b. Of a country, place, etc. Devoid of food; not yielding food; barren.
1636. G. Sandys, Paraphr. Ps. cvii. (1638), 131.
| For he in foodless Deserts fed | |
| The Hungry with cœlestiall Bread. |
1726–46. Thomson, Winter, 256.
| The foodless Wilds | |
| Pour forth their brown inhabitants. |
1842. R. Oastler, Fleet Papers, II. 359. Their home was peopled, but it was foodless.
1861. Wynter, Soc. Bees, 199. England, with regard to her dependencies and foreign countries, is ike a city situated in the midst of a desert; vast foodless tracts have to be traversed by her ships, the camels of the ocean.
2. Without the properties of food; innutritious.
1891. Independent (N. Y.), 13 Aug. Alcohol is shown to be foodless.
Hence Foodlessness.
1852. Meanderings of Mem., I. 10. Galls them no more their foodlessness or fag.
