FAMINE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

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

calamity; cataclysm; catastrophe; disaster; tragedy (an event resulting in great loss and misfortune)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "famine"):

the Great Calamity; the Great Hunger; the Great Starvation; the Irish Famine (a famine in Ireland resulting from a potato blight; between 1846 and 1851 a million people starved to death and 1.6 million emigrated (most to America))

Sense 2

Meaning:

An acute insufficiency

Synonyms:

dearth; famine; shortage

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

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

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

Credits

Context examples:

The Gumbasa Aqueduct was completed in 1913 to reduce the risk of famine by providing a consistent water supply for local farmers.

(NASA Map Reveals a New Landslide Risk Factor, NASA)

This increases if they have experienced negative situations such as sexual abuse, famine, wars and poverty early on.

(Half of mental health disorders arise in adolescence, SciDev.Net)

The effects of the Eldgjá eruption must have been devastating for the young colony on Iceland – very likely, land was abandoned and famine severe.

(Volcanic eruption influenced Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, University of Cambridge)

They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine.

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

Then they all three rode on together, and on their way home came to a country that was laid waste by war and a dreadful famine, so that it was feared all must die for want.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I saw him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small one), as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the act of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt for the purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should have reached an advanced stage of attenuation.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose- jointed with famine.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He was taking precautions against another possible famine—that was all.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine!