Adjacent Words

deficiency definitions

	Tweet

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable; "there is a serious lack of insight into the problem"; "water is the critical deficiency in desert regions"; "for want of a nail the shoe was lost" [syn: lack, deficiency, want]
2: lack of an adequate quantity or number; "the inadequacy of unemployment benefits" [syn: insufficiency, inadequacy, deficiency] [ant: adequacy, sufficiency]

Merriam Webster's

noun (plural -cies) Date: 1603 1. the quality or state of being deficient ; inadequacy 2. an amount that is lacking or inadequate ; shortage: as a. a shortage of substances necessary to health b. deletion 2b(1)

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. (pl. -ies) 1 the state or condition of being deficient. 2 (usu. foll. by of) a lack or shortage. 3 a thing lacking. 4 the amount by which a thing, esp. revenue, falls short. Phrases and idioms: deficiency disease a disease caused by the lack of some essential or important element in the diet.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Deficiency De*fi"cien*cy, n.; pl. Deficiencies. [See Deficient.] The state of being deficient; inadequacy; want; failure; imperfection; shortcoming; defect. ``A deficiency of blood.'' --Arbuthnot. [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries. --Buckle. Deficiency of a curve (Geom.), the amount by which the number of double points on a curve is short of the maximum for curves of the same degree.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(deficiencies) 1. Deficiency in something, especially something that your body needs, is not having enough of it. They did blood tests on him for signs of vitamin deficiency... N-VAR: with supp 2. A deficiency that someone or something has is a weakness or imperfection in them. (FORMAL) ...a serious deficiency in our air defence. = weakness N-VAR: with supp

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Want, lack, defectiveness, insufficiency, scantiness, shortness, meagreness, dearth, scarcity, shortage, deficit. 2. Failing, failure, frailty, infirmity, imperfection, foible, fault, error, weakness, weak side, blind side.

Moby Thesaurus

absence, adulteration, arrearage, arrestment, baseness, beggary, blemish, break, bug, callowness, catch, crack, dearth, defalcation, default, defect, defectibility, defection, defectiveness, deficit, demerit, deprivation, dereliction, destitution, discontinuity, drawback, drought, erroneousness, failing, failure, fallibility, famine, fault, faultiness, faute, fewness, flaw, foible, frailty, gap, hiatus, hole, immaturity, impairment, imperfection, impoverishment, impurity, inaccuracy, inadequacy, inadequateness, incompetence, incompleteness, incompletion, inexactitude, inexactness, infirmity, insufficiency, interval, kink, lack, lacuna, little problem, littleness, maladroitness, meanness, mediocrity, miscarriage, missing link, need, neglect, omission, outage, patchiness, pettiness, privation, problem, rift, scantiness, scrappiness, shabbiness, short measure, short weight, shortage, shortcoming, shortfall, sin, sketchiness, smallness, snag, something missing, starvation, subnormality, taint, triviality, ullage, underage, underdevelopment, undevelopment, unevenness, unperfectedness, unskillfulness, unsoundness, vulgarity, vulnerable place, want, wantage, weak link, weak point, weakness