dearth
/dəːθ
/noun
1A scarcity or lack of something: there is a dearth of evidence...
- This lack of public support is responsible for a dearth of overt fearless principle in the public service.
- These failures can be partially attributed to a lack of political will and a dearth of resources.
- This season there has been a dearth of good supernatural television, and hopefully this will fit the bill.
Synonyms
lack, scarcity, scarceness, shortage, shortfall, want, deficiency, insufficiency, inadequacy, paucity, sparseness, meagreness, scantiness, rareness, infrequency, uncommonness, destitution, privation;
famine, drought, poverty;
absence, non-existence
rare exiguity, exiguousness
1.1 archaic A situation where food is in short supply.Dearth was of such obvious advantage to the usurers that it was commonly believed that they used sorcery to prevent rain from falling....
- But here in Scotland, in the regularly recurring famine years of the 17th and 18th centuries, when harvests failed, dearth and death prevailed.
- They believed the end of the world was at hand, and the proliferation of plagues, epidemics, disasters, dearth, famine and wars was to be seen as the mark of the imminent Dissolution.
Origin
Middle English derthe (see dear, -th2).