A commonly used expression is a hunger or a burst, meaning ‘a period of privation followed by a period of prosperity’, ‘a feast or a famine’. A picturesque illustration is found in the Laird of Logan (1854) As for feasting, it’s either a hunger or a burst wi’ us; for, if I’m sent ae night to my bed wi’ my stomach stuffed like a Yule haggis, maybe for a week after it will be as toom [empty] as my master’s pouch [pocket]. In many trades where income was uncertain a hunger or a burst was familiar; although fishing was a hazardous occupation and catches fluctuated, J. G. Bertram tells us in Harvest of Sea (1865): There is usually on the average of the year a steady income, the people seldom suffering from “a hunger and a burst” like weavers and other handicraftsmen.
Hunger can also be used as a verb. A seemingly modern thought for the over-zealous slimmer comes from Patrick Walker’s Some Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr Alexander Peden (1724). Christ minds only to diet you, and not to hunger you. (Sadly, diet here simply means ‘feed’.) The actions of a belligut are enumerated by Dougal Graham (a1779): She’s aye flyting on (scolding) her lasses, hungers her servant lad, eats cocks and hens hersel, and gars the poor minister eat saut herrin.