famine
noun
Simple meaning
A severe shortage of food resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
famuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfæmən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
countable
A period of extreme shortage of food in a region.
Severe shortage or lack of something.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
Used this way, famine is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A famine in Ireland resulting from a potato blight.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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What Does It Mean Here?
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.