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

Worldwide, an El Niño typically offers Australia and northern South America with very dry conditions, and can trigger drought, Cohen said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026

The Environment Agency said parts of East Anglia were now in "prolonged dry weather status" after only moving out of drought recovery in March.

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026

Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026

The number of cattle on U.S. pastures has fallen to its lowest level in 75 years, after ranchers struggled with years of rising costs and drought.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

He would, he told himself, in spite of gods and drought, do that which he had determined.

From "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck

Meanwhile, analysts have said factors like smaller cattle herds, droughts, wildfires and processing-plant closures have played a role in driving up beef prices.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026

That means they play an outsize role in climate change, which is amplifying heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026

Flash floods were waterlogging soils, while droughts were killing off whatever crops survived.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026

But swathes of southern, west, central and eastern Africa usually see drier-than-normal conditions, raising the risk of droughts.

From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026

But if something displeased the gods—and sometimes it took very little—the consequences were awesome: droughts, storms, wars, earthquakes, volcanoes, epidemics.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Related Words

• lack
• scarcity