ABSTRACT
As the potato blight spread throughout Ireland in the fall o f 1845, the word ‘famine’ was used with increasing frequency in the British press, although starvation had not yet occurred. At that point the word stood for a concept — certainly a frightening one — but not a reality. Britain and Ireland had not seen wide-spread famine since 1740-1741. During the decades prior to the 1840s, starvation and disease had occurred in parts o f Ireland when the potatoes failed. Yet, no one in either island had actually seen famine on the apocalyptic scale that the word suggested. British writers used the word thinking they knew what it meant without actually having seen its terrible reality.
