famine

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C1 — Advanced

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun an acute insufficiency
noun a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death

Borrowed from Middle French famine, itself from the root of Latin fames. Cognate with Spanish hambruna (“famine”).

There were conflagrations and famine. — Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11 Watts, Cotton, Famine, ii. — Great Britain and the American Civil War, Ephraim Douglass Adams
Oh the famine and the fever! — The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

dearth, shortage

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