famine
pronunciation
How to pronounce famine in British English:
UK [ˈfæmɪn]
How to pronounce famine in American English:
US [ˈfæmɪn]
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- Noun:
- an acute insufficiency
- a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
Word Origin
- famine
- famine: [14] Both famine and famish [14] come ultimately from Latin famēs ‘hunger’. Its Vulgar Latin derivative *faminis produced Old French famine, source of English famine. Famish has come via a more circuitous route: another Vulgar Latin derivative of famēs was *affamāre, a compound verb formed with the prefix ad- ‘towards’; in Old French this became afamer, which was borrowed into Middle English, with loss of its first syllable, as fame ‘starve’; and before long this had the suffix -ish added to it, on the model of other verbs such as abolish and diminish.=> famish
- famine (n.)
- mid-14c., from Old French famine "famine, starvation" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *famina, from Latin fames "hunger, starvation, famine," which is of unknown origin.
Synonym
Example
- 1. But the ethiopian famine of 1984 undermined this approach .
- 2. Experts do not predict another famine .
- 3. They had more varied diets and so weren 't at risk of famine .
- 4. Natural " bridges " could also be created to help the pandas escape from a bamboo famine .
- 5. Aid workers say north korea is facing its worst food-supply crisis since a famine in the late 1990s .