famine

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

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

   The long drought brought famine to the province.

2. 2
   noun

   an acute insufficiency

   The long drought brought famine to the province.

3. 3
   noun

   Extreme shortage of food in a region.

   It was reserved for Christians to torture bread, the staff of life, bread for which children in whole districts wail, bread, the gift of pasture to the poor, bread, for want of which thousands of our fellow beings annually perish by famine; it was reserved for Christians to torture the material of bread by fire, to create a chemical and maddening poison, burning up the brain and brutalizing the soul, and producing evils to humanity, in comparison of which, war, pestilence, and famine, cease to be evils.

4. 4
   noun

   A period of extreme shortage of food in a region.

   1986, United States Congress, House Select Committee on Hunger, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Famine and Recovery in Africa The root causes of the current famine are known: poverty, low health standards....

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

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