"starve the beast" meaning in All languages combined

See starve the beast on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Forms: starves the beast [present, singular, third-person], starving the beast [participle, present], starved the beast [participle, past], starved the beast [past]
Etymology: According to Bruce Bartlett, the second sense was first used by an anonymous Reagan staffer in “We didn’t starve the beast. It’s still eating quite well—by feeding off future generations.” Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} starve the beast (third-person singular simple present starves the beast, present participle starving the beast, simple past and past participle starved the beast)
  1. (US) To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition. Tags: US Categories (topical): Economics
    Sense id: en-starve_the_beast-en-verb-MljAsTTw Disambiguation of Economics: 49 51 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 55 45
  2. (US politics) To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending. Tags: US Categories (topical): US politics, Conservatism, Economics, Government, Politics, Taxation
    Sense id: en-starve_the_beast-en-verb-I77MaGOp Disambiguation of Conservatism: 26 74 Disambiguation of Economics: 49 51 Disambiguation of Government: 0 100 Disambiguation of Politics: 0 100 Disambiguation of Taxation: 12 88 Topics: government, politics

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for starve the beast meaning in All languages combined (3.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "According to Bruce Bartlett, the second sense was first used by an anonymous Reagan staffer in “We didn’t starve the beast. It’s still eating quite well—by feeding off future generations.”",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "starves the beast",
      "tags": [
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        "singular",
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    },
    {
      "form": "starving the beast",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "starved the beast",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "starved the beast",
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  "head_templates": [
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
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          "_dis": "55 45",
          "kind": "other",
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          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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          "_dis": "49 51",
          "kind": "topical",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition."
      ],
      "id": "en-starve_the_beast-en-verb-MljAsTTw",
      "links": [
        [
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        [
          "destroy",
          "destroy"
        ],
        [
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          "attrition"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition."
      ],
      "tags": [
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          "_dis": "49 51",
          "kind": "topical",
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          "kind": "topical",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "12 88",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Taxation",
          "orig": "en:Taxation",
          "parents": [
            "Government",
            "Law",
            "Money",
            "Politics",
            "Society",
            "Justice",
            "Business",
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            "Economics",
            "Fundamental",
            "Social sciences",
            "Sciences"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending."
      ],
      "id": "en-starve_the_beast-en-verb-I77MaGOp",
      "links": [
        [
          "federal government",
          "federal government"
        ],
        [
          "revenue",
          "revenue"
        ],
        [
          "spending",
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US politics) To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "politics"
      ]
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    "Ronald Reagan",
    "The Independent Review"
  ],
  "word": "starve the beast"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English verbs",
    "en:Conservatism",
    "en:Economics",
    "en:Government",
    "en:Politics",
    "en:Taxation"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "According to Bruce Bartlett, the second sense was first used by an anonymous Reagan staffer in “We didn’t starve the beast. It’s still eating quite well—by feeding off future generations.”",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "starves the beast",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "starving the beast",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "starved the beast",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "starved the beast",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "starve the beast (third-person singular simple present starves the beast, present participle starving the beast, simple past and past participle starved the beast)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "weaken",
          "weaken"
        ],
        [
          "destroy",
          "destroy"
        ],
        [
          "attrition",
          "attrition"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) To progressively weaken or destroy a dangerous or powerful entity through attrition."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "en:US politics"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "federal government",
          "federal government"
        ],
        [
          "revenue",
          "revenue"
        ],
        [
          "spending",
          "spending"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US politics) To deprive the federal government of revenue by cutting taxes in an effort to force it to limit spending."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "politics"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Bruce Bartlett",
    "Ronald Reagan",
    "The Independent Review"
  ],
  "word": "starve the beast"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.