drought
pronunciation
How to pronounce drought in British English:
UK [draʊt]
How to pronounce drought in American English:
US [draʊt]
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- Noun:
- a temporary shortage of rainfall
- a prolonged shortage
Word Origin
- drought
- drought: [OE] Etymologically, drought means simply ‘dryness’. The prehistoric Germanic base that produced English dry (and indeed drain) was *draug-, *drūg-. To this was added the suffix -th, used for creating abstract nouns from adjectives, as in length, strength, and truth; this gave Old English drūgath. The subsequent change of -th to -t (which began in the 13th century) is mirrored in such words as height and theft.=> drain, dry
- drought (n.)
- Old English drugað, drugoð "drought, dryness, desert," from Proto-Germanic *drugothaz, from Germanic root *dreug- "dry" (cf high/height) with *-itho, Germanic suffix for forming abstract nouns (see -th (2)). Drouth was a Middle English variant continued in Scottish and northern English dialect and in poetry.
Synonym
Antonym
Example
- 1. The drought is not bad news for every farmer .
- 2. Its effect on the drought is difficult to prove .
- 3. But the longer that this drought continues , the bigger the policy issues become .
- 4. Now , the dam seems to be causing the opposite problem , spurring drought in central and eastern china .
- 5. Your body experiences a drought condition !