- 1
A dearth is a serious lack of something people want or need: not a missing pen, but a painful shortage. You might read of a dearth of rain, a dearth of jobs, or a dearth of evidence. It is a formal, mostly written word; in ordinary talk people say there is not enough, or call it a shortage. Though actually, it is close to dear in the old sense “costly.” When food was scarce it became dear (expensive), and that was a dearth — so the word still carries “ hard to get,” not only “missing.”
短缺；匱乏
組成dear (old sense: costly, precious) + -th (turns an idea into a noun, as in warmth). From Middle English derth / derthe; the older meaning is “dearness,” which came to mean scarcity.
同家族的字
- dearthe old sense “costly / precious” is the root: when a thing is scarce, it becomes dear
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
dearthnoun/dɜːθ/
- 1
A period or condition when food is rare and hence expensive; famine.
- 2
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
- 3
obsoleteDearness; the quality of being rare or costly.
- Whatsoever doth remaine for money, let Money-mongers, supply when they will. And I referre to Politicians to dispute among themselves whether the dearth of all things which most complaine of doeth proceede from plenty of gold and silver since the late discoveries, or from Monopolies, and combinations of Merchants and Craftsmen, or from Transportation of graine, or from pleasure of great personages, which doe most highly rate such things as they most like, or excesse in private persons, or to all these conjointly.
- 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…
dearthverb/dɜːθ/
- 1
obsoletedatedTo cause or produce a scarcity in something.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。