About a year ago, I had an on-line friend, a native speaker, chatting with me. When I sent a message to him saying:
I'm starving to the point of death.
He rephrased that as:
I'm starving to death.
But now that I think about it, and googled it, my expression wasn't wrong and they use it a lot. So I was wondering why he had to correct the sentence. Is it not a colloquial language? Or does it have slightly differences in meaning?
Best Answer
If someone starves to death, they are dead.
If someone starves to the point of death, they are on the cusp of dying due to starvation, but have not yet done so. If they do not get food immediately, they will die. Your friend was using it as hyperbole, or dramatic overstatement.
Of course, if someone really were starving to the point of death, they would be unconscious and couldn't eat, and would need intravenous nutrition.
This is not to be confused with at the point of death, which means "at the moment that death occurred". It is particularly used for legal stuff related to what happens after someone dies, but is used in other contexts as well.