Eating out

Muerto de hambre is the past participle of morir doing everyday work. Spanish exaggerates with a death and then makes it agree: llegamos muertos de hambre, llegó muerta de hambre — the ending moves with whoever is hungry. The whole family behaves the same way: muerto de miedo, muerto de sueño, muerto de risa. English reaches for one adjective instead — « starving », « terrified », « exhausted » — which agrees with nobody and shows nothing of the verb it was built from. And nothing about the Spanish sounds dramatic: it is what a person says when the food is late.