dearth

dearth
    n 1: an acute insufficiency [syn: {dearth}, {famine},
         {shortage}]
    2: an insufficient quantity or number [syn: {dearth}, {paucity}]
    

Dearth \Dearth\, n. [OE. derthe, fr. dere. See {Dear}.]
   Scarcity which renders dear; want; lack; specifically, lack
   of food on account of failure of crops; famine.
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         There came a dearth over all the land of Egypt. --Acts
                                                  vii. 11.
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         He with her press'd, she faint with dearth. --Shak.
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         Dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination.
                                                  --Dryden.
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Dearth
a scarcity of provisions (1 Kings 17). There were frequent
dearths in Palestine. In the days of Abram there was a "famine
in the land" (Gen. 12:10), so also in the days of Jacob (47:4,
13). We read also of dearths in the time of the judges (Ruth
1:1), and of the kings (2 Sam. 21:1; 1 Kings 18:2; 2 Kings 4:38;
8:1).

  In New Testament times there was an extensive famine in
Palestine (Acts 11:28) in the fourth year of the reign of the
emperor Claudius (A.D. 44 and 45).
    

47 Moby Thesaurus words for "dearth":
      absence, aridity, barrenness, birth control, contraception,
      default, defect, deficiency, dry womb, dryness, exiguity,
      exiguousness, family planning, famine, impotence, inadequacy,
      ineffectualness, infecundity, infertility, infrequency,
      insufficiency, lack, meagerness, miss, need, paucity,
      planned parenthood, poverty, privation, rareness, rarity,
      scant sufficiency, scantiness, scantness, scarceness, scarcity,
      shortage, sparseness, sparsity, sterileness, sterility,
      uncommonness, unfertileness, unfruitfulness, unproductiveness,
      want, withered loins