DEARTH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dearth mean? 

• DEARTH (noun)
  The noun DEARTH has 2 senses:

1. an acute insufficiency

2. an insufficient quantity or number

  Familiarity information: DEARTH used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEARTH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An acute insufficiency

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

dearth; famine; shortage

Hypernyms ("dearth" is a kind of...):

deficiency; lack; want (the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An insufficient quantity or number

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

dearth; paucity

Hypernyms ("dearth" is a kind of...):

scarceness; scarcity (a small and inadequate amount)

 Context examples 

Another key issue is the dearth of basic information about the incidence of snakebite.

(Snakebite resolution set for Health Assembly approval, SciDev.Net)

He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

With such a dearth of heavy elements, astronomers predict that the LMC should contain a comparatively paltry amount of complex carbon-based molecules.

(Stellar Embryos in Nearby Dwarf Galaxy Contain Surprisingly Complex Organic Molecules, National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

Among planets that orbit close to their stars, there's a curious dearth of worlds between about 1.5 and two times Earth's size.

(Citizen Scientists Find New World with NASA Telescope, NASA)

The first and the mildest course is, by keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it, whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases: and if the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with great stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping into cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout the land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father: Everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left, and that is the end.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)