1. famine(n = noun.state) dearth, shortage - an acute insufficiency;
is a kind of deficiency, lack, want
2. famine(n = noun.event) - a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death;
is a kind of calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, disaster, tragedy
has particulars: the great calamity, the great hunger, the great starvation, the irish famine
General scarcity of food; dearth; a want of provisions; destitution. Milton. [1913 Webster]
"There was a famine in the land." [1913 Webster]
famine, n.
1 a extreme scarcity of food. b a shortage of something specified (water famine).
2 archaic hunger, starvation.
Etymology:
ME f. OF f. faim f. L fames hunger
N insufficiency, inadequacy, inadequateness, incompetence, deficiency, imperfection, shortcoming, paucity, stint, scantiness, none to spare, bare subsistence, scarcity, dearth, want, need, lack, poverty, exigency, inanition, starvation, famine, drought, dole, mite, pittance, short allowance, short commons, half rations, banyan day, emptiness, poorness, depletion, vacancy, flaccidity, ebb tide, low water, a beggarly account of empty boxes, indigence, insolvency, drain of resources, impoverish, stint, put on short allowance, do insufficiently, scotch the snake, Adj, insufficient, inadequate, too little, not enough, unequal to, incompetent, weighed in the balance and found wanting, perfunctory, deficient, wanting imperfect, ill-furnished, ill-provided, ill- stored, ill-off, slack, at a low ebb, empty, vacant, bare, short of, out of, destitute of, devoid of, bereft of, denuded of, dry, drained, unprovided, unsupplied, unfurnished, unreplenished, unfed, unstored, untreasured, empty-handed, meager, poor, thin, scrimp, sparing, spare, stinted, starved, starving, halfstarved, famine-stricken, famished, jejune, scant, scarce, not to be had, not to be had for love or money, not to be had at any price, scurvy, stingy, at the end of one's tether, without resources, in want, in debt, insufficiently, in default of, for want of, failing, semper avarus eget.