Words

No.

Can you elaborate? My friend is refusing to believe it, and no matter how much I try to provide evidence, they won't budge .

I just checked Google Book Search, and there are rather more hits than I expected, though of course vastly fewer than for "starving to death". To me it just sounds unnatural, but let's see what other forum members say.

It sounds unnatural to me too.

You could say I am dying of thirst.

Anonymous Can you elaborate? My friend is refusing to believe it, and no matter how much I try to provide evidence, they won't budge .

Your friend either is mistaken or speaks a brand of English that I'm not aware of.

I have never heard of "thrist" being used as a verb myslef. "Thristing to death ...." is a new one on me.

grammarfreakI have never heard of "thrist" being used as a verb myslef.

Well, "thirst" can be a verb in some contexts, especially in figurative use, such as "I was thirsting for knowledge".

GPY"I was thirsting for knowledge".

Metaphorically speaking, yes, and I heard that before. But " thirsting to death" is the first.

"I thirst!" appears in the King James Version of the New Testament (7 Last Words). I don't know of it any natural context now.

It's supposed to be, "I'm dying of thirst.", but you might hear this from a pub crawler about to start on his crawl, merely for effect.