drought

Also drouth

[drout]

noun

1. a period of dry weather, especially a long one that is injurious to crops.

2. an extended shortage.

   a drought of good writing.

   Synonyms: famine, paucity, dearth, want, lack, scarcity

3. Archaic.,  thirst.

drought

/ draʊt /

noun

1. a prolonged period of scanty rainfall

2. a prolonged shortage

3. Archaic and Scot form: drouth. an archaic or dialect word for thirst

drought

1. A long period of abnormally low rainfall, lasting up to several years.

Pronunciation Note

Drought and drouth, nouns derived from the adjective dry plus a suffix, are spellings that represent two phonetic developments of the same Old English word, and are pronounced and respectively. The latter pronunciation, therefore, is not a mispronunciation of drought. The now unproductive suffix -th1 and its alternate form -t were formerly used to derive nouns from adjectives or verbs, resulting in such pairs as drouth — drought from dry and highth—height (the former now obsolete) from high. In American English, drought with the pronunciation is common everywhere in educated speech, and is the usual printed form.

Other Word Forms

• droughty adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of drought¹

First recorded before 1000; Middle English; Old English drūgath, equivalent to drūg- (base of drȳge “dry”) + -ath noun suffix; cognate with Dutch droogte “dryness”; dry, -th ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of drought¹

Old English drūgoth; related to Dutch droogte; see _dry

Example Sentences

The San Fernando Valley area recently suffered from water outages and has, over the last 12 months, consistently experienced below-average rainfall and drought conditions.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The contraction in the industry has worsened, as several years of drought have forced ranchers to slash their herds.

Read more on BBC

Prices for beef have been climbing for months on the back of cattle-supply problems driven by factors such as drought, labor shortages, inflation and market instability, as MarketWatch has reported.

Read more on MarketWatch

Invented in the 1940s, countries have been seeding clouds for decades to alleviate drought, fight forest fires and even to disperse fog at airports.

Read more on Barron's

On the field, baseball’s longest postseason drought extended to 11 years.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• lack 
• scarcity 

When To Use

What does drought mean?

A drought is a long period with no rain or unusually low levels of rain or other precipitation.Because weather and climate are different in different places throughout the world, there is no single definition of what counts as a drought. However, it always refers to a significant period of dry weather. Droughts have many harmful effects, including water shortages, crop failure, and in some cases famine, among other things. The word is often used in the phrase drought conditions, referring to very dry conditions resulting from a lack of rainfall.Drought can also be used in a figurative way to refer to an extended shortage of or long period without something, as in The city has the longest championship drought in all of sports. Example: The drought continued for more than three weeks and wildfires started to appear.