The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Starvation \Star*va"tion\ (st[aum]r*v[=a]"sh[u^]n), n.
   The act of starving, or the state of being starved.
   [1913 Webster]

   Note: This word was first used, according to Horace Walpole,
         by Henry Dundas, the first Lord Melville, in a speech
         on American affairs in 1775, which obtained for him the
         nickname of Starvation Dundas.
         "Starvation, we are also told, belongs to the class of
         'vile compounds' from being a mongrel; as if English
         were not full of mongrels, and as if it would not be in
         distressing straits without them." --Fitzed. Hall.
         [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

starvation
    n 1: a state of extreme hunger resulting from lack of essential
         nutrients over a prolonged period [syn: starvation,
         famishment]
    2: the act of depriving of food or subjecting to famine; "the
       besiegers used starvation to induce surrender"; "they were
       charged with the starvation of children in their care" [syn:
       starvation, starving]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

84 Moby Thesaurus words for "starvation":
   Lenten, Spartan, absence, abstemious, abstinence from food,
   ascetic, asphyxiation, austere, beggary, choke, choking,
   defectiveness, deficiency, deficit, deprivation, destitution,
   drought, drowning, dwarfed, dwarfish, exiguous, famine, fasting,
   frugal, imperfection, impoverished, impoverishment, incompleteness,
   jejune, killing, lack, lean, limited, liver death, meager, mean,
   megadeath, miserly, narrow, need, niggardly, omission, paltry,
   parsimonious, poor, punishment of Tantalus, puny,
   restriction of intake, scant, scanty, scrawny, scrimp, scrimpy,
   serum death, shortage, shortcoming, shortfall, skimp, skimpy,
   slender, slight, slim, small, smotheration, smothering, spare,
   sparing, stingy, stinted, straitened, strangling, strangulation,
   stunted, subsistence, suffocation, thin, unnourishing,
   unnutritious, violent death, want, wantage, watered, watery,
   watery grave