Meaning & use
famine
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Meanings
nouncountable or uncountable
A severe shortage of food across a region or country, leading to widespread hunger and often many deaths.
Grammar: Countable for a specific event (a famine), uncountable in general (death from famine).
Patterns
- famine in somewhere
- a famine caused by something
The famine in the region lasted three years.
Drought and war together brought famine to the province.
Aid agencies warned that famine was spreading.
nouncountablefigurative
A serious lack of something that people need or want.
Grammar: Used with a noun modifier or of: a famine of talent.
Patterns
- a famine of something
The industry is suffering a famine of skilled workers.
After the festival, the town faced a famine of visitors.
Word forms
| plural | famines |
|---|
Common combinations
- severe famine
- A severe famine struck the highlands.
- famine relief
- Famine relief reached the villages by truck.
- die of famine
- Thousands died of famine before help arrived.
- feast or famine
- Freelance work is often feast or famine.
- famine conditions
- The country is facing famine conditions after two failed harvests.
Synonyms and how they differ
- starvation
- Starvation describes the suffering of going without food, which can affect one person, while famine is a large-scale crisis.
- hunger
- Hunger is the everyday feeling or condition of needing food and is far less extreme than famine.
- scarcity
- Scarcity means that something is in short supply, but it is a more general and milder word than famine.
- dearth
- Dearth is a formal word for a shortage of anything, whereas famine is mainly a lack of food or a dramatic figurative lack.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: famine or feminine? famine or drought?
famine vs feminine
Feminine means relating to women and has nothing to do with food, though it can look and sound a little similar at a glance.
famine vs drought
A drought is a long period without rain, which may cause a famine but is not the same thing.
Practice
The harvest failed for the third year in a row, and the region slid into ___.
Choose one answer.
Famine is the widespread lack of food that follows repeated harvest failure. Drought is a cause, not the lack of food itself, while abundance and festival do not fit.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “famine”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.