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The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s hit which U.S. region the hardest?

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drought

American  

[drout] / draʊt /

Also drouth

noun

• droughts
  plural

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.

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drought British  

/ 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

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drought Scientific  

/ drout /

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

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Pronunciation

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.

Usage

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.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• droughty
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• droughts
  plural

Etymology

Origin of drought

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

Explanation

When there is a drought somewhere, there's not enough rainfall. In certain areas, a drought can last for weeks, months, sometimes even years! Forget about running your lawn sprinkler during a drought; the water is needed for drinking, bathing, and toilet flushing. Another way drought can be used is to refer to a shortage of something (other than rainfall) that lasts for a long period of time, like a drought in job growth during a recession. Typically a drought is not a good thing and something you hope to avoid. For example, if your friend Kenny hasn't gone on a date in five years, it's safe to say that he is having a romantic drought.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

drought droughts

El Niño is associated with drought and misery for farmers and epic food-price inflation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

France has temporarily relaxed rules for making some of its best-known cheeses after the summer drought drastically reduced the amount of grass available to feed milk herds.

From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026

The last time India imported sugar for domestic consumption was nearly a decade ago, when the country was grappling with drought.

From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026

But the summer's drought, which affected 95 percent of mainland France in July, has left normally rich pastures dry and bare.

From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026

Besides, there had been a small crop of grain because of the summer’s drought.

From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli

The amount detected in Neanderthal samples was similar to levels found in western chimpanzees, which use insects to supplement their diets on the savanna, particularly during droughts.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026

In recent years, a growing body of research has focused on analyzing the role of climate change in worsening droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026

Extreme heat and droughts in Europe are severely damaging harvests and will likely cause crop failures, according to a European Commission survey.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026

This leads to more sustained droughts in some parts of the planet, and more ferocious storms in others.

From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026

But if they had drought conditions more often than not now, didn’t that make droughts the new normal?

From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz

Related Words

• lack
• scarcity