lack
- 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.
- 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.
- to be absent or missing, as something needed or desirable: Three votes are lacking to make a majority.
- lack in, to be short of or deficient in: What he lacks in brains, he makes up for in brawn.
Origin of lack
Synonyms for lack
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Antonyms for lack
Related Words for lacks
loss, shortfall, inadequacy, reduction, dearth, paucity, absence, poverty, scarcity, shortage, shortcoming, need, require, want, distress, privation, defect, decrease, meagerness, shrinkingExamples 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 CultureAmy Zimmerman
December 23, 2014
Unfortunately, West Africa lacks many of the things required to make this happen.
Even the valor of tragedy is denied to Daisy, “a woman born with a voice that lacks a tragic register.”
The current Court, though, is full not of pols but of judges; only Elena Kagan lacks prior experience as a federal judge.
Every line and every shot announces itself with the urgency that Two Faces of January lacks.
Historical Examples of lacks
We do not fulminate against a treatise on Quaternions because it lacks humor.
The Dramatic Values in PlautusWilton Wallace Blancke
"It lacks just a few months of being twenty-eight years," she added.
DustMr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
When he's got that, no matter what else he lacks, you've got something to build on.
The UnderdogF. Hopkinson Smith
It lacks the neatness, the athletic movement of Paine's English.
Shelley, Godwin and Their CircleH. N. Brailsford
He lacks all his family's instinct for business-like promptitude.
People of PositionStanley Portal Hyatt
lack
- an insufficiency, shortage, or absence of something required or desired
- something that is required but is absent or in short supply
- (when intr, often foll by in or for) to be deficient (in) or have need (of)to lack purpose
Word Origin for lack
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.