drought

[ drout ]

/ draʊt /

noun

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

an extended shortage: a drought of good writing.

Archaic. thirst.

Nearby words

Also drouth

[drouth] /draʊθ/.

Origin of drought

before 1000; Middle English; Old English drūgath, equivalent to drūg- (base of drȳge dry) + -ath -th¹; cognate with Dutch droogte dryness

SYNONYMS FOR drought

2. scarcity, lack, want, dearth, paucity, famine.

Can be confuseddraught drought (see pronunciation note at draught)

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

[drout] /draʊt/ and

[drouth] /draʊθ/ 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

[drout] /draʊt/ is common everywhere in educated speech, and is the usual printed form.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for drouth

Then I has the steward lug up a lot of cold bottles and I breaks a ten year drouth with a whole glass of fizz water.
Shorty McCabe|Sewell Ford
"Thou shalt not steal," is just as good a commandment if it should turn out that the flood was a drouth.
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 8 (of 12)|Robert G. Ingersoll
That State was then suffering intensely from drouth, as she continued to do for some weeks thereafter.
What I know of farming:|Horace Greeley
Hunter: in open prairies honey yield abundant when season is favorable; drouth injures it.
Texas Honey Plants|C. E. Sanborn

All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles.
Ulysses|James Joyce

British Dictionary definitions for drouth

drought

/ (draʊt) /

noun

a prolonged period of scanty rainfall

a prolonged shortage

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

Derived Formsdroughty, adjective

Word Origin for drought

Old English drūgoth; related to Dutch droogte; see dry

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for drouth

drought

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.

Science definitions for drouth

drought

[ drout ]

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