| 单词 | drought |
| 释义 | drought /drowt/, n. 1. a period of dry weather, esp. a long one that is injurious to crops. 2. an extended shortage: a drought of good writing. 3. Archaic. thirst. Also, drouth /drowth/. [bef. 1000; ME; OE drugath, equiv. to drug- (base of dryge DRY) + -ath -TH1; c. D droogte dryness] Syn. 2. scarcity, lack, want, dearth, paucity, famine. Pronunciation. DROUGHT and DROUTH, nouns derived from the adjective dry plus a suffix, are spellings that represent two phonetic developments of the same Old English word, and are pronounced /drowt/ and /drowth/ respectively. The latter pronunciation, therefore, is not a mispronunciation of DROUGHT. The now unproductive suffix -th1 and its alternate form -t were formerly used to derive nouns from adjectives or verbs, resulting in such pairs as DROUTH - DROUGHT from dry and highth - height (the former now obsolete) from high. In American English, DROUGHT with the pronunciation /drowt/ is common everywhere in educated speech, and is the usual printed form. |
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