lack

[lak]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR lack ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

deficiency or absence of something needed, desirable, or customary: lack of money; lack of skill.

something missing or needed: After he left, they really felt the lack.

verb (used with object)

to be without or deficient in: to lack ability; to lack the necessities of life.

to fall short in respect of: He lacks three votes to win.

verb (used without object)

to be absent or missing, as something needed or desirable: Three votes are lacking to make a majority.

Verb Phrases

lack in, to be short of or deficient in: What he lacks in brains, he makes up for in brawn.

Origin of lack

1125–75; Middle English lak; cognate with Middle Low German lak, Middle Dutch lac deficiency; akin to Old Norse lakr deficient

Synonyms for lack

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR lack ON THESAURUS.COM

1. dearth, scarcity, paucity, deficit, insufficiency. 1, 3. want, need.

Synonym study

3. Lack, want, need, require as verbs all stress the absence of something desirable, important, or necessary. Lack means to be without or to have less than a desirable quantity of something: to lack courage, sufficient money, enough members to make a quorum. Want may imply some urgency in fulfilling a requirement or a desire: Willing workers are badly wanted. The room wants some final touch to make it homey. Need often suggests even more urgency than does want stressing the necessity of supplying what is lacking: to need an operation, better food, a match to light the fire. Require, which expresses necessity as strongly as need, occurs most frequently in serious or formal contexts: Your presence at the hearing is required. Successful experimentation requires careful attention to detail.

Antonyms for lack

1. surplus.

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

Related Words for lacks

loss, shortfall, inadequacy, reduction, dearth, paucity, absence, poverty, scarcity, shortage, shortcoming, need, require, want, distress, privation, defect, decrease, meagerness, shrinking

Examples from the Web for lacks

Contemporary Examples of lacks

What designer West lacks in productivity, he more than makes up for in pure, unadulterated confidence and blind anger.
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s Balmain Campaign: High Fashion Meets Low Culture
Amy Zimmerman
December 23, 2014
Unfortunately, West Africa lacks many of the things required to make this happen.
Blood Is Ebola’s Weapon and Weakness
Abby Haglage
October 26, 2014
Even the valor of tragedy is denied to Daisy, “a woman born with a voice that lacks a tragic register.”
Carol Shields’s Tale Of Secondhand Life
Nathaniel Rich
October 26, 2014
The current Court, though, is full not of pols but of judges; only Elena Kagan lacks prior experience as a federal judge.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Levels With Us on Why She’s Not Retiring
Jeff Greenfield
September 25, 2014
Every line and every shot announces itself with the urgency that Two Faces of January lacks.
David Vs. Goliath in the Age of Video on Demand
Teo Bugbee
September 25, 2014

Historical Examples of lacks

We do not fulminate against a treatise on Quaternions because it lacks humor.
The Dramatic Values in Plautus
Wilton Wallace Blancke
"It lacks just a few months of being twenty-eight years," she added.
Dust
Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
When he's got that, no matter what else he lacks, you've got something to build on.
The Underdog
F. Hopkinson Smith
It lacks the neatness, the athletic movement of Paine's English.
Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle
H. N. Brailsford
He lacks all his family's instinct for business-like promptitude.
People of Position
Stanley Portal Hyatt

British Dictionary definitions for lacks

lack

noun

an insufficiency, shortage, or absence of something required or desired

something that is required but is absent or in short supply

verb

(when intr, often foll by in or for) to be deficient (in) or have need (of)to lack purpose

Word Origin for lack

C12: related to Middle Dutch laken to be wanting

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 lacks

lack

c.1300, "absence, want; shortage, deficiency," perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *lac, or else borrowed from Middle Dutch lak "deficiency, fault;" in either case from Proto-Germanic *laka- (cf. Old Frisian lek "disadvantage, damage," Old Norse lakr "lacking"), from PIE *leg- "to dribble, trickle." Middle English also had lackless "without blame or fault."

lack

late 12c., perhaps from Middle Dutch laken "to be wanting," from lak (n.) "deficiency, fault," or an unrecorded native cognate word (see lack (n.)). Related: Lacked; lacking.