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

drosometer, drosophila, dross, drossy, droste-hülshoff, drought, droughty, drouk, droukit, drouth, drouthy

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

Science definitions for drouth

drought

[ drout ]

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