dearth

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A period or condition when food is rare and hence expensive; famine.
2. (broadly, countable, uncountable)Scarcity; a lack or short supply.

   “I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.”

   “And faine would hee, if he could tell how, haue plentie in his own fields, and scarcity in other mens; superfluitie at home, and dearth abroade, that hee might sell his corne at the dearer rate”

   “Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth / Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, / Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood / Changes and off he goes!) within a rood— / Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.”

   “A dearth of signalmen and the high cost of labour is hastening an elimination process that already was well under way before the second world war.”

   “Similarly, at Cambridge, I observe what I had seen elsewhere - the dearth of tourists. The station would normally be awash with overseas visitors and students. Now it is quiet.”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Dearness; the quality of being rare or costly.

   “O God,heavenly Father, whose gift it is that the rain doth fall, the earth is fruitfull, beasts increase, and fishes do multiply: behold, we beseech thee, the afflictions of thy people, and grant that the scarcity and dearth (which we do now most justly suffer for our iniquitie) may through thy goodness be mercifully turned into cheapness and plenty…”

   “The property of Contraries is, that they become one anothers Cure, whereupon we who have suffered by scarcity and dearth, do pray to be relieved by their contraries, cheapness and plenty”

   “In Ireland, distress is greatest when provisions are cheapest; then we see famine without dearth; hunger amidst superabundance of provisions; farmers without a market; labourers without the means of purchase.”

verb

1. (dated, obsolete, transitive)To cause or produce a scarcity in something.