deficiency

deficiency
    n 1: the state of needing something that is absent or
         unavailable; "there is a serious lack of insight into the
         problem"; "water is the critical deficiency in desert
         regions"; "for want of a nail the shoe was lost" [syn:
         {lack}, {deficiency}, {want}]
    2: lack of an adequate quantity or number; "the inadequacy of
       unemployment benefits" [syn: {insufficiency}, {inadequacy},
       {deficiency}] [ant: {adequacy}, {sufficiency}]
    

Deficiency \De*fi"cien*cy\, n.; pl. {Deficiencies}. [See
   {Deficient}.]
   The state of being deficient; inadequacy; want; failure;
   imperfection; shortcoming; defect. "A deficiency of blood."
   --Arbuthnot.
   [1913 Webster]

         [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his
         deficiencies made him the ridicule of his
         contemporaries.                          --Buckle.
   [1913 Webster]

   {Deficiency of a curve} (Geom.), the amount by which the
      number of double points on a curve is short of the maximum
      for curves of the same degree.
      [1913 Webster]
    

109 Moby Thesaurus words for "deficiency":
      absence, adulteration, arrearage, arrestment, baseness, beggary,
      blemish, break, bug, callowness, catch, crack, dearth, defalcation,
      default, defect, defectibility, defection, defectiveness, deficit,
      demerit, deprivation, dereliction, destitution, discontinuity,
      drawback, drought, erroneousness, failing, failure, fallibility,
      famine, fault, faultiness, faute, fewness, flaw, foible, frailty,
      gap, hiatus, hole, immaturity, impairment, imperfection,
      impoverishment, impurity, inaccuracy, inadequacy, inadequateness,
      incompetence, incompleteness, incompletion, inexactitude,
      inexactness, infirmity, insufficiency, interval, kink, lack,
      lacuna, little problem, littleness, maladroitness, meanness,
      mediocrity, miscarriage, missing link, need, neglect, omission,
      outage, patchiness, pettiness, privation, problem, rift,
      scantiness, scrappiness, shabbiness, short measure, short weight,
      shortage, shortcoming, shortfall, sin, sketchiness, smallness,
      snag, something missing, starvation, subnormality, taint,
      triviality, ullage, underage, underdevelopment, undevelopment,
      unevenness, unperfectedness, unskillfulness, unsoundness,
      vulgarity, vulnerable place, want, wantage, weak link, weak point,
      weakness