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dearth

Noun
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A severe scarcity or lack of something needed or desired, such as food, resources, affection, or imaginative inspiration.

Detailed Definition
In older or more literary English, dearth can mean scarcity or an absence of supply, not just famine. Here it contrasts with the poem’s language of abundance and “wealth,” making poverty feel like a condition of lack that still yields imagination.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Of possibility from dearth” places dearth against abundance and potential; A dearth is a serious lack, as in “a dearth of bread” or “a dearth of mercy”; “After the drought, a dearth of seed” makes scarcity concrete and ecological; A contemporary civic poem may lament a dearth of housing, trust, or public care
Additional Notes
The word “dearth” in the quoted line is a literary term for scarcity that many modern readers may need to look up.; Found in the poem, The Wealth of Nothing by Elizabeth Devereux
Also Known As
scarcity lack insufficiency famine
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