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noun
Dearth  n.  Scarcity which renders dear; want; lack; specifically, lack of food on account of failure of crops; famine. "There came a dearth over all the land of Egypt." "He with her press'd, she faint with dearth." "Dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dearth" Quotes from Famous Books



... supper arrived. We did not know the number of invited guests (there are some things not even revealed to the Wise Woman), but although we were a trifle nervous about the amount of eatables, we were quite certain that there would be no dearth of liquid refreshment. ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... splendour of the enterprise is, it is true, at an end; there remain none but the subordinate participators in the revolts, who are reduced by Henry IV., more by policy than by warlike achievements. To overcome this dearth of matter, Shakspeare was in the second part obliged to employ great art, as he never allowed himself to adorn history with more arbitrary embellishments than the dramatic form rendered indispensable. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Mann, Jan, 4.-Complains of dearth of news. His ink at low water mark. Lord Sandwich's first-rate tie-wig. Lady Granville's assemblies. Marshal ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... men are to be chosen as friends, and of this kind of men there is a great dearth. It is very difficult to judge of character before we have tested it; but we can test it only after firendship is begun. Thus friendship is prone to outrun judgment, and to render a fair trial impossible. It ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... last! These rovings end, Their thirst is slaked in larger dearth: The yearning infinite ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... time. His son is in Cambridge. I am afraid that it will be no easy matter to find a desirable tenant and that none are likely to apply but a set of needy speculators; indeed, there is a general dearth of money. How is Dr. M.? ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... always shows me where heaven is. She should, of course, be dressed in black, because she's in mourning; but we're so poor.... Do you know why we never had money? Because God was angry with us for our sins. 'The righteous suffer no dearth.' ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... many people in my life, and have often wondered at the dearth of nice ones—how few there are that one likes to be with and wishes to see again and again. Axel is one of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... Browning's doctrine of love, though it inspired some of his most exalted lyrics, throws into naked relief the dearth of social consciousness in Browning's psychology. Yet it is easy to see that the absolute self-sufficiency into which he lifted the bare fact of love was one of the mainsprings of his indomitable optimism. In Love was concentrated all that emancipates ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... we had a dearth of student talks and readings, among them the following: Herbert B. Rosenberg on the Falashas, Louis Ribback on the Chinese Jews, Jesse Block on the Spanish Jews, S. J. Lurie on Maimonides, Julius Cohen ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... examination and added thereto some years of study for the next) is due to two causes, the large number of students whom the University rejects at its examinations before it grants the B.A. degree to the remainder, and the dearth of graduates. (Quinquennial Report on the Progress of Education in India for 1902-1907, by Mr. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... you have a bad habit of jumping at conclusions. And in our great dearth of occupation here, I think it might be all the better for you to take a little interest in your neighbours. So I've a great mind to indulge you with an important idea, suggestion, discovery. Harkee, friend!"—and he put on an air of sentimental mystery, not a bad ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... people; and then we go out merely because we can't stay at home. A dismal story, and a true one. Excuse me for showing you the simple truth; well-dressed falsehood is a personage much more presentable. I am now come to an epoch in my history in which there is a dearth of extraordinary events. What shall I do? Shall I invent? I would if I could; but I cannot. Then I must confess to you that during these last four years I should have died of ennui if I had not been kept ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... stair and turned into Miss Cromarty's boudoir. On her, Mr. Carrington produced a favourable impression that was evident at once. At all times she liked good-looking and agreeable gentlemen, and lately she had been suffering from a dearth of them. She had been suffering also from her brother's pig-headed refusal to reconsider his decision not to buy a car; and finally from the lack of some one to sympathise with her in this matter. In the opulent-looking and sportingly ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... The great dearth of learned preachers and confessors that prevailed about the middle of the sixteenth century appealed strongly to the Jesuits to throw themselves into the breach, and thus against the original intention of their founder, they became the spiritual guides of those who made the history of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... Ephraim; For God, saith he, hath made me to possess Abundance in the land of my distress. And when the seven plenteous years were gone, The seven years of famine next came on, As Joseph said, and there was a great dearth In every nation throughout all the earth; But in the land of Egypt there was bread. And when the people almost famished, Complained to the king, he bade them go To Joseph, and whate'er he said to do. And now the famine daily waxing sore, Joseph began ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... is dearth in our Gaulish Provinces we direct your Devotion to take bonds from the shipmasters along the whole western coast of Italy (Lucania, Campania, and Thuscia) that they will go with supplies of food only to the Gauls, having liberty to dispose of their cargoes as may be agreed between buyer and seller. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Hindon, water riseth and makes a streame before a dearth of corne, that is to say, without raine; and is commonly look't upon by the neighbourhood as a certain presage of a dearth; as, for example, the dearness of ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... are my task. And there are compensations About the job that field-grey heroes lack. Although, e.g., there is a dearth of rations, I'm not the one that goes without his whack; Nor do the bayonets of inferior nations Send nervous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various

... post vacant at the public 'Academy of Arts'—an institution supported by the municipality of the town. There is a great dearth of 'professors of drawing,' owing to the sudden resignation of a gentleman who previous to our arrival had been the sole representative of 'the divine art of Apelles.' The academy is a dreary apology for a school of art. The accommodation is scanty, and the 'models' provided for the scholars ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... Paul. One of the persons is Belial, whose appearance and behaviour are indicated by the stage-direction, "Enter a Devil with thunder and fire." He makes a soliloquy in self-glorification, and then complains of the dearth of news: after which we have the stage-direction, "Enter another Devil called Mercury, coming in haste, crying and roaring." He tells Belial of St. Paul's conversion, and declares his belief that the Devil's reign is about to end; whereat Belial is in stark dismay. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... the maple sap, which they boiled down into sugar; they planted and tended the fields of corn and beans; they did everything that was like work, indoors and out, and the men did nothing that was not like play or war. While their plenty lasted, it was for all; when the dearth came, every one shared it. But in this free, sylvan life there was the grace of an unstinted hospitality. The stranger was pressed to make the lodge of his host his home, and he was given the best of ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... the pen of Miss Barrett, would be a remarkable publication at any time; but, in the present dearth of poetical genius, their appearance is doubly welcome; their claims on our consideration are doubly strong; and we cannot allow ourselves to pass them over without some detailed notice of their contents. In spite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... Legion lay dying in Algiers. There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebb'd away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say. The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade's hand, And he said, "I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... to himself, he manifested it. Some little anecdotes were talked about for some time after they occurred. As we did not read much, and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with servants, there was a dearth of subjects for conversation. We therefore discussed the circumstance of the Captain taking a poor old woman's dinner out of her hands one very slippery Sunday. He had met her returning from the bakehouse as he came from church, and noticed ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... of the Yuens took heed only of his pleasures. The great, profiting by his indolence, thought of nothing save of how to enrich themselves; the public treasures being exhausted by their malpractices, it needed only a few years of dearth to reduce the people to distress, and the excessive tyranny of those who governed them led to the forming of parties which disturbed the empire even to its foundations. Touched by the misfortunes ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... produced to decorate the table; and even a case of wax flowers, a production of thirty years since, which had been respectfully transferred to a china closet by Ursula's better taste, but which in the dearth of ornament she had brought back again. Reginald carried off the wax flowers and replaced the table with his own hands, while Ursula scorched her ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... Method greet,— Tell him, my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend, Who cannot love me, and who will not mend, Tell him, that not in vain I shall assay To tread and trace our "old Horatian way,"[13] And be (with prose supply my dearth of rhymes) What better men have been in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... Flanders with the Duke Of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, she's grown Too apathetic even to rebuke Her idleness. What is she on this Earth? No woman surely, since she neither can Be wed nor single, must not let her mind Build thoughts upon a man Except for hers. Indeed that were no dearth Were her Lord here, for well she knew his worth, And when she thought of him her eyes ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... prince was against his own blood. All this the under-bailiff of Szczytno related to us; he praised the courts of the Knights of the Cross in Zmudz because they sent priests to that country to convert the people to Christianity and feed them in time of dearth. Something of that kind was done, for the grand master, who fears God more than the others, ordered it. But instead of it, they gathered together the children and sent them to Prussia, and they outraged the women in the presence of their ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... grapes and water-melons will rot; and Allah is Omniscient!" Q "What if it fall on the Sabbath (Saturday)?" "That is Saturn's day and portendeth the preferment of slaves and Greeks and those in whom there is no good, neither in their neighbourhood; there will be great drought and dearth; clouds will abound and death will be rife among the sons of Adam and woe to the people of Egypt and Syria from the oppression of the Sultan and failure of blessing upon the green crops and rotting of grain; and Allah is All-knowing!"[FN426] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... modern invention to contend against—there was chance enough beyond all question. Who could say whether the very key in her hand might not be the lost duplicate of one of the keys on the admiral's bunch? In the dearth of all other means of finding the way to her end, the risk was worth running. A flash of the old spirit sparkled in her weary eyes as she ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, we are wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... of destruction, might plump into our midships. The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to the journals of the empire, at this moment of a dearth of news, enough to make bankrupts of all the coffee-houses in London, and close every club from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner. We should all have been immortal in paragraphs without number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and special juries, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... refuge in Glamorganshire; and carried with her the most dreadful of all national scourges,—a sanguinary civil war. The whole country of South Wales, we are told, was so miserably ravaged by these intestine horrors, (p. 089) and the dearth consequent upon them was so excessive, that horses and dogs became at last the ordinary food of the miserable survivors. From the accession of Edward III, and throughout his long reign, Wales seems to have ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... books and works of art upon an author may be seen in all respectable writers. If knowledge alone made literature, or culture genius, there would be no dearth of these things among the moderns. But I feel bound to say that there is something higher and deeper than the influence or perusal of any or all books, or all other productions of genius,—a quality of information which the masters can never impart, and which all the libraries do ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... make the still cold days lively and cheerful by their merry voices, are, in animated nature, what flowers would be in inanimate nature, if they were found blooming under the snow. Nature does not permit, at any season, an entire dearth of those sources of enjoyment that spring from observation of the external world; and as there are evergreen mosses and ferns that supply in winter the places of the absent flowers, in like manner there are chattering birds that linger in the wintry woods; and Nature has multiplied the echoes at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... salaries have remained so low as to lead to one or two formidable and costly strikes that unfortunately took no account of the economic conditions of demand and supply. But in the days of the Civil War there was a great dearth of skilful manipulators of the key. About fifteen hundred of the best operators in the country were at the front on the Federal side alone, and several hundred more had enlisted. This created a serious scarcity, and a nomadic operator going to any telegraphic centre would be sure to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... perilous journey, having "wrought two and twenty dayes and as many nights, having slept not one houre on land all that while," they came out on Lake Huron. Still trouble beset them, in the form of dearth of food. Game was scarce along the shore, and they were glad of such berries as they found. Radisson records that the "wildmen," as he always calls the Indians, showed themselves "far gratfuller then many Christians even ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... bustle of the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet while every family is anxious to erect a memorial to its departed members, the untainted breath of ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the people of the isles, as would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a resident artist in that line. His own monument, recording his disease by starvation, would probably be an early specimen of his skill. Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gone against a Castle near Zaragoza, they besought the King to give them force to go against him; howbeit this the King would not. At this time Ali Abenaxa, the Adelantado of the Almoravides, besieged Murcia, and there was a dearth in the city, and Alvar Fanez who should have relieved them did not, and they were so closely beset that they were compelled to yield up the town. As soon as he had taken Murcia he went against the Castle of Aledo, of which you have heard, and assaulted it vigorously, and took it ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... midst a massy altar stood, And slaughter'd offerings press'd the piles of wood; 565 While ISRAEL'S chiefs the sacred hill surround, And famish'd armies crowd the dusty ground; While proud Idolatry was leagued with dearth, And wither'd famine swept the desert earth.— "OH, MIGHTY LORD! thy woe-worn servant hear, 570 "Who calls thy name in agony of prayer; "Thy fanes dishonour'd, and thy prophets slain, "Lo! I alone survive of all thy train!— "Oh send from heaven thy sacred fire,—and pour "O'er ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... abandon the sword and the wrestling-booth for the harmless bodkin and the hearthstone of domesticity. Being absolute in refusal, she was kidnapped by her friends and sent on board a ship, bound for Virginia and slavery. There, in the dearth of womankind, even so sturdy a wench as Moll might have found a husband; but the enterprise was little to her taste, and, always resourceful, she escaped from shipboard before the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... John Welles (mayor in 1431), built the Standard in Chepe, helped to build the Guildhall Chapel, built the south aisle of St. Antholin's, and repaired the miry way leading to Westminster (the Strand). Sir Stephen Brown, mayor, 1438, imported cargoes of rye from Dantzic, during a great dearth, and as Fuller quaintly says, "first showed Londoners the way to the barn door." Sir John Crosby (Grocer and Sheriff in 1483), lived in great splendour at Crosby House, in Bishopsgate Street: he gave great ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... news. This proved quite difficult at first, for the people in their shortsightedness clamored for the accounts of impending doom which they devoured with a dreadful fascination. But eventually, when the wildest rumors produced by the dearth of accurate reports were disproved, many of the people in Western Europe and Africa actually believed the Grass had somehow failed to make headway on the Asiatic continent and would have remained in their pleasant ignorance had ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... story with which I will trouble you happened in or shortly after the year 1800, and the whole circumstances are well known to me. The dearth of the years in the end of the eighteenth and beginning of this century was inconvenient to all, but distressing to the poor. A solitary old woman, in a wild and lonely district, subsisted chiefly by rearing chickens, an operation requiring so much care and attention that the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have written nothing new for near six months. It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none. 'T is barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... banquets, jousts, and other festivities, were likewise undertaken on so magnificent a scale that the Duke, her husband, was offended at Margaret's extravagance. The people, by whom she was not beloved, commented bitterly on the prodigalities which they were witnessing in a period of dearth and trouble. Many of the nobles mocked at her perplexity. To crown the whole, the young Prince was so obliging as to express the hope, in his mother's hearing, that the bridal fleet, then on its way from Portugal, might sink ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... consecrated earth of the churchyards no longer sufficed for the reception of its destined tenants. In the order of Franciscans alone, 120,430 monks are said to have perished. This plague had been preceded by tremendous earthquakes, which laid in ruins towns, castles, and villages. Dearth and famine, clouds of locusts, and even an innocent comet, had been long before regarded as fore-runners of the pestilence; and when it came it was viewed as an unequivocal sign of the wrath of God. At the outset, the Jews became, as usual, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... the dearth of fame, Though link'd among a fetter'd race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush—for Greece ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... was scarce and light hearts hard to find, at the birth of Sarah Twig there was no dearth of these commodities. The snow was on the ground, Follygob says—the woods and coppices and hills lay slumbering beneath a glistening white mantle. What a mind! To have written those words! It was undoubtedly Follygob's artistic ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... All over the country stood spacious stone storehouses, divided between the Sun and the Inca, in which were laid up maize, coca, woollen and cotton stuffs, gold, silver, and copper, and beside these were yet others designed to supply the wants of the people in times of dearth. Thus in Peru, though no man who was not an Inca could become rich, all had enough to ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... adopted by the railway—of dividing the total distance by the total descent in order to determine the grade. Not to be outdone in point of ingenuity, the Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of sluice gates connecting with pools which could be filled with reserve water to be drawn upon as navigation required. By 1819 the necessary depth of water between Mauch Chunk and Easton ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... into a little parlour, furnished in the usual style, with one or two articles a great deal too showy for the place, and a general dearth as to the rest. A lumbering mahogany sofa, that showed as much wood and as little promise as possible, a marble-topped centre-table, chairs in the minority, and curtains minus, and the hearth-rug providently turned bottom upwards. On the centre-table lay a pile of Penny Magazines, a volume of' selections ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... be unruly, stupid, or willful, he must pay the penalty. Frequently, the case has been rendered incurable by massive dosage or surgery. My system cures all that is curable when intelligently applied. And you will notice that in some instances there is an absolute dearth of symptoms. You also observe that I give them a dose and tell them to return in a week or ten days. When they return they often exhibit a splendid crop of symptoms, and I experience no trouble then in ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance of any good new poems, they regarded such a poetic dearth ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... the Chinese method in financing officials and local administrations, and in replenishing a central treasury which no wealth could satisfy. The Chinese phenomenon was therefore in no sense new; the dearth of coined money and the variety of local standards made the methods used economic necessities. The system was not in itself a bad system: its fatal quality lay in its woodenness, its lack of adaptability, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... view it is the equivalent of hygiene for the individual. It is a national regimen for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol and the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all American boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the other side—that military training in so far as it is really conducted in ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... which abounded here," on the base characters of the persons in whose houses the Plague began and ended, on the vehemence of the infection in "the Inns and Suckling houses of the town, places of much disorder," and tells how great dearth followed the Plague "with much wailing and sorrow," and how the judgment of God seemed but to harden ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... every ten even of newspaper readers turn with disgust from the columns headed "Anti-corn-law League," "Doings of the League," "Great Meeting of the Anti-corn-law League," and so forth; and, (making every allowance for the exigencies occasioned by the dearth of topics while Parliament is not sitting,) we are exceedingly surprised, that the great London newspapers should inflict upon their readers so much of the slang and drivel of the gentry in question. In the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... owed me. I seek payment now." So he was told; but he drew nearer yet. "I would know more of thee and of thy debt," He said. And then Odysseus, "This thy strife Hath ruined all my fields which are my life, Brought murrain on my beasts, cold ash to my hearth, Emptiness to my croft. Hunger and dearth, Are these enough? Who pays me?" Then Paris, "I pay, but first will know what man it is I am to pay, and in what kind." So said, Snatching the hood, he whipt it from his head And lookt and knew the Ithacan. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... inspection, that the work contains much fresh matter, which will be acceptable to schools and students, particularly in the department of dialogues of which there is a great dearth of really good and FIT matter in ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... this:—to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... that natural causes had for ever prevented the culture or manufacture of silk in France. If such an industry were possible, he was sure that the decline of martial spirit in France and an eternal dearth of good French soldiers would be inevitable, and he even urged that the importation of such luxurious fabrics should be sternly prohibited, in order to preserve the moral health of the people. The practical Hollanders were more inclined to leave silk farthingales and brocaded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... right royally and soon forgot the dearth of the big divide. As we were saddling up to move the following morning, several outfits came trailing down into the valley, glad as we had been of the splendid field of grass. They were led by a grizzled old American, who cursed the country with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... circumstances. They were probably women of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggy land they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, but merely a languid expectation of something undefined. My comrade was disposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel but throughout the Provinces generally,—a resentment that could be shown to be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty in these lands, and it was probably a bad year for it. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... sight to the girls after a long dearth of events. Many things indeed upon which they scarce cast an eye when they came, they were now capable of regarding with a little feeble interest. Nor, although ignorant of everything agricultural, were they quite ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... dearth, And all things held in time's control Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with—so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!—within a rood, Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... minds some dregs remain, Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain; Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times. 530 No pardon vile obscenity should find, Though wit and art conspire to move your mind; But dulness with obscenity must prove As shameful sure as impotence in love. In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... epoch of discovery. From then on the finding of asteroids became a commonplace. Latterly, with the aid of photography, the list has been extended to above four hundred, and as yet there seems no dearth in the supply, though doubtless all the larger members have been revealed. Even these are but a few hundreds of miles in diameter, while the smaller ones are too tiny for measurement. The combined bulk of these minor ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... them to have invented a language which thus lowered nature, robbing it of its solemn majesty, its august dignity. As all these divinities had the human figure, God was banished from His own universe, man everywhere substituting his own personality. Speaking of the great dearth of vivid descriptions of natural scenery among the ancients, Chateaubriand says: 'It must not be supposed that men as full of sensibility as the ancients wanted eyes to see nature, or talent to depict ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... foot of the Villina hill, near the church of Lais,[49] is a swamp where rises a spring of water, called from its colour the Blue Spring. It is said that the spring can produce rain or drought, and thus cause dearth or plenty. In time of drought three widows of the same name must go to the spring on a Sunday during service-time, to clean it out and to enlarge the opening. Each must take a spade, hoe, rake, a ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... for a few minutes, and several uniformed officers came forward and were introduced to my wife and me. It was a picturesque scene. The mantle of snow covering all, the strange-looking mountaineers, the eager-faced, boyish officers—French, English, Austrian—all soldiers of fortune, who, in the dearth of great wars, were seeking fame in the inglorious civil contest; our torches casting fantastic shadows until the forest-covered mountain, dark and frowning, though snow lay everywhere, seemed peopled with hosts of men—all made a picture never to be ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... and backward drew The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth: 544 He with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth, Their lips together ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... ruled in Chaos, and still keep The awful secrets of that ancient dearth, Before the briny fountains of the deep Brimm'd up the hollow cavities of earth;— I saw each trickling Sea-God at his birth, Each pearly Naiad with her oozy locks, And infant Titans of enormous girth, Whose huge young feet ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... over for the forenoon, the east-bound express, which, with the west-bound, composed the only trains that traversed that section of the road each day, having arrived and departed a half-hour before, and he had cut in on the line to regale himself with the news of the world. But there was a dearth of thrilling events, such as his rude soul delighted in. The Apache uprising, that was feared, had not taken place. Colonel Hardie, of Fort Grant, had the situation well in hand. The Nihilists were giving their latest czar a breathing-spell. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... having nevertheless always ready for distribution a certain quantity of Testaments, the wishes of weak human beings being influenced by such strange causes that it is probable that were it known at Madrid, or in other places, that there was a dearth of Testaments, the demand for the same would instantly become greater than for the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... guests were concerned, he had not trouble. They welcomed him to croquet, to walking and boating excursions, and to their evening games and promenades. Such of the ladies as danced were pleased to secure him as a partner. Indeed, from the dearth of gentlemen during the week, he soon found himself more in demand than he cared to be, and saw that even the landlord was beginning to rely upon him to keep up a state of pleasurable effervescence among his patrons. His languid friend, Stanton, was not ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... January most of the enlistments would expire. For some weeks he had been anxiously watching the returns of the enlistments, and the figures frequently plunged him into depression. On the 28th of November, finding that but thirty-five hundred men had enlisted, he wrote: "Such a dearth of public spirit, such stock-jobbing, and such fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, in this great change of military arrangement, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy I may never be witness to again." A week ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... might be feared that the honey and the incense would neutralize the good effects to be expected from the wormwood and salt. If, however, the phrase "vanityes of the head" be interpreted to mean a dearth of ideas, we may assume that the above prescription was intended as a stimulus to the imagination, and as such it might well have a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... immense meadows and cattle on a thousand hills, are the prominent agricultural features of these sections of the country. Good grass and good water are the two indispensables to successful dairying. And the two generally go together. Where there are plenty of copious cold springs, there is no dearth of grass. When the cattle are compelled to browse upon weeds and various wild growths, the milk and butter will betray it in the flavor. Tender, juicy grass, the ruddy blossoming clover, or the fragrant, well-cured hay, make the delicious milk ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... keeping himself before the public, and getting talked about as a celebrity. He even arranged (to the disgust and envy of his rivals) to die during a week when no event of importance was occupying public attention. In consequence, reporters, being short of “copy,” owing to a dearth of murders and “first nights,” seized on this demise and made his ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... these same things within the limits of a single art for the purpose of performing fully the functions of the art, is far more difficult [i.e. to discuss logic in the abstract is easy, but to reason logically in any specific field of knowledge is difficult]. Therefore he who is hampered by a dearth of the disciplines will not have the power which Dialectic ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... could have seen this matter in the light he did; that everybody, or nearly everybody, thought of Maurice and Lucia as near neighbours and old playfellows, and no more. So he felt a very slight stir of indignation, which, in the dearth of other sensations, was not disagreeable. But then probably the girl was quite over-praised; no beauty at all, in fact. People in these outlandish places did not appreciate anything ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... There has been no dearth of attacks—often violent attacks—on my conception of an intimate causal connection between ontogenesis and phylogenesis; but no other satisfactory explanation of these important phenomena has yet been offered to us. I say ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... other guns to bear and were careful not to let them get adrift. The muzzles had been well stopped against wetting by the sea and with a little dry powder for the priming, most of them could be served. They could not be reloaded for dearth of ammunition but Captain Wellsby felt confident that ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... would be derelict in my duty as a teacher of voice did I not insert this most important chapter in my book. I am glad to have the best authorities on my side of the subject. I think it is the true reason why we have such a dearth of fine singers in this generation. It certainly is not because we have not the voices. California can produce as fine voices as are found in Italy, but as fast as they are found some unscrupulous fake comes along and finds the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... memorable year 1781, the great, decisive year of the war. While Greene was fighting Cornwallis and Rawdon, and Washington watching eagerly for an opportunity to strike at Clinton, Congress was busy making up its accounts. One circumstance told for them. There was no longer the same dearth of gold and silver which had embarrassed them so much at the beginning of the war. A gainful commerce was now opened with the West Indies. The French army and the French fleet were here, and hard money with them. Louis-d'ors and livres and Spanish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the filthy sanctities of the place; before the law could bring up its lumbering assistance. Nevertheless, there is a supervision; nor does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace to be tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth I noticed a ballad-singer going through the street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provincial dialect, of which I could only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation; but by ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it may be urged, has a right to spell as he chooses, and to express his ideas, when he has any, as best he can; while, when he suffers from a dearth of those rare articles, he has still more reason to rejoice in liberty of choice in respect to the language he selects to cover his poverty of thought. Hence there are doubtless good and sufficient reasons for every specimen of "English as she is wrote," which it is the object of ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... as Schopenhauer, who, of course, is greatly quoted, is cast Lombroso and Ferrerro's work, "Woman as a Criminal and a Prostitute." We know no scientific work of equal size—it contains 590 pages—with such a dearth of valid evidence on the theme therein treated. The statistical matter, from which the bold conclusions are drawn, is mostly meager. Often a dozen instances suffice the joint authors to draw the weightiest deductions. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... scarcity, dearth pink Spanish so-called to wipe he spends his time in talking I am trying my hardest to do it you should have seen ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... to remain always chained to the same spot of earth.' In the Middle Ages, and especially among the members of the enlightened Saracenic race, the instinct of travel was mainly an instinctive desire for education. There was no other school of knowledge so complete and practical, in the dearth of books and the absence of other than commercial intercourse between the ends of the earth, I fancy that this instinct, skipping over some centuries, reappeared, in my case, in its original form; for it was not until ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... knows well the Father, The eyes will be always day; But now they grow dim the rather That the light is more than they. Believe, amidst thy sorrows, That the blight that swathes the earth Is only a shade that borrows Life from thy spirit's dearth. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... had been complaining to St. Peter of the dearth of good singers in Heaven. "Yet," He said testily, "I hear excellent singing outside the walls. Why are not those singers here ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... much annoyed, Rashid and the shikari and the cook laughed heartily. No one, however, was for going back. Upon the following day our friend destroyed a jackal and two conies, which consoled him somewhat in the dearth of tigers, and we rode forward resolutely, asking our question at each village as we went along. Everywhere we were assured that there were really tigers in the mountain, and from some of the villages young sportsmen who owned guns insisted upon joining our excursion, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... single pace, 50 We could not see each other's face, But with that pale and livid light That made us strangers in our sight: And thus together—yet apart, Fettered in hand, but joined in heart,[d] 'Twas still some solace in the dearth Of the pure elements of earth, To hearken to each other's speech, And each turn comforter to each With some new hope, or legend old, 60 Or song heroically bold; But even these at length grew cold. Our voices took a dreary tone, An echo of the dungeon stone, A grating sound, not full ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley, writing to Quiney from Stratford ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out to him that since the town was wholly unable, in consequence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped 'that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when and ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... blows and the wards might be practised by us to the utmost of our power. And if there were a lack of competitors, the ridicule of fools would not deter us from hanging up a lifeless image and practising at that. Or if we had no adversary at all, animate or inanimate, should we not venture in the dearth of antagonists to spar by ourselves? In what other manner could we ever study the art ...
— Laws • Plato

... damages. If that dependence should fail, he hinted that, in all probability, the witnesses were not incorruptible; or, should they prove to be so, one man's oath was as good as another's; and, thank Heaven, there was no dearth of evidence, provided money could be found to answer ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... the wildest revel and mirth, Days of sorrow, remorse, and dearth, A heaven of love and a hell of regret— But there's always the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... is of so meek and inoffensive a kind that we should as soon think of making prize of a thrush in a bed of strawberries. We are much afraid that the tendency of the present age towards the facetious has contributed not a little to the dearth of sonnets and the extermination of the elegiac stanza. So long as friend Michael Angelo Titmarsh has the privilege of frequenting the house of Mrs Perkins and other haunts of fashionable and literary celebrity, Poseidon Hicks will relapse into gloomy silence, and Miss Bunion refrain from chanting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... great dearth of news for some time, which is happily interrupted by the capture of the English East and West India fleets, by the combined fleets of France and Spain, as your Excellency will see by the accompanying journals. Important as this event is in itself, we consider it here ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... giant's war was done, Complaint is silent. For this boon supreme Welcome, ye gods, be wickedness and crime; Thronged with our dead be dire Pharsalia's fields, Be Punic ghosts avenged by Roman blood; Add to these ills the toils of Mutina; Perusia's dearth; on Munda's final field The shock of battle joined; let Leucas' Cape Shatter the routed navies; servile hands Unsheath the sword on fiery Etna's slopes: Still Rome is gainer by the civil war. Thou, Caesar, art her prize. When thou shalt ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... [Christ's] exaltation. Now I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence-halfpennies, (Irish sixpences, which, in the dearth of silver coin in England, were made current at fourpence-halfpenny-ED), that rich men carry in their purses, when their GOLD is in their trunks at home. Oh! I saw that my gold was in my trunk at home, in Christ my Lord and Saviour. Now, Christ was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... experience you had lately to make with Y.Z. I regret sincerely, and would gladly make you some compensation for a loss that is as unexpected as it is unfortunate. But I am sorry to say I do not know of any one who would exactly suit you. There is truly a great dearth of men [Menschen] in this world! When they are put to the test they prove themselves useless. My ten years' service in Weimar gave ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. Under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and indifference ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... longs for large colonial possessions, that its population does not increase, while the populations of its enemy, Germany, and of its well-wisher, the United States, go up by leaps and bounds. True, there are economic writers who regard the dearth and even the decrease of population in France as an advantage to the country. But these need not be considered in this inquiry, for it is quite obvious that any country which really aspires to be numbered with the great powers, and effectually wishes to own important colonial possessions, must ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... Wind Band Society thought of making themselves heard. We've no dearth of festive occasions nowadays. Tonight it's in honour ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen

... In the general dearth of work of high and permanent value, one or two southern authors may be mentioned whose writings have at least done something to illustrate the life and scenery of their section. When in 1833 the Baltimore Saturday ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... out of the loss of the Psyche, another matter was brought to the fore which was destined to exercise a very important influence upon my fortunes. This matter had reference to the dearth of shallow-draught vessels in the slave squadron vessels capable of following the slavers in over the bars of the African rivers and fighting them upon equal terms. At the moment in question we had not a ship in the squadron drawing less than fourteen ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... do not manage your weapons with that facility and grace that you should do, I have no spirit to play with you, your dearth of ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... the Paris bookseller Thielmann Kerver, with an arrow substituted for the tree, and the design on the shield altered. The custom of adapting other men's devices was very common, and is one of the many evidences of dearth of originality on the part of ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... left of their wages. As their resources were almost always exhausted before the day of distribution once more came round, beggary succeeded to fulness of living, and a part of the population was literally starving for several days. This almost constant alternation of abundance and dearth had a reactionary influence on daily work: there were scarcely any seignorial workshops or undertakings which did not come to a standstill every month on account of the exhaustion of the workmen, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... those two or three minutes when it is full of passing students, and we think you will admit that, if we have not made it 'an habitation of dragons,' we have at least transformed it into 'a court for owls.' Solemnity broods heavily over the enclosure; and wherever you seek it, you will find a dearth of merriment, an absence of real youthful enjoyment. You might ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a time of dearth; a period in which the new name was no longer a thing to conjure with, and artlessness was a drug on the market. Cleverness was the name of the new requirement, and Jimaboy's gift was glaringly sentimental. When you open your magazine at "The Contusions of Peggy, by James Augustus ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... scale quickly demonstrated its value as an instrument for the classification of mentally-retarded and otherwise exceptional children, it had, nevertheless, several imperfections which greatly limited its usefulness. There was a dearth of tests at the higher mental levels, the procedure was so inadequately defined that needless disagreement came about in the interpretation of data, and so many of the tests were misplaced as to make the results of an examination more or less misleading, particularly in the case ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... so long repressed and thwarted by superstition and despotism, broke forth, that his studies were achieved. We have only to compare what was done, thought, and felt in the Peninsula, during the ten years between the coronation of Bonaparte at Milan and his overthrow at Waterloo, with the subsequent dearth of national triumphs in every sphere, and with the inert, apprehensive, baffled existence of the Italians in the grasp of reinstated and reinforced imbecile, yet tyrannic governments, to appreciate the feelings of a young, well-born, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... animate and inanimate. And in spite of themselves the architects of St. Peter's were constrained to take something from man; they refused his height for their scale, but they tried to use his shape for their ornament. And so in the blankest dearth of fancy that ever befel architect or builder they imagined human beings bigger than the human beings of experience; and by means of these, carved in stone and inlaid in mosaic, they set up a relation of their own. The basilica was related to the colossal figure (as a church ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth Of all that irked her from the hour of birth; With stillness that is almost Paradise. Darkness more clear than noon-day holdeth her, Silence more musical than any song; Even her very heart has ceased to stir: ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... fulness of her fancy, 'I feel I am not robbed. 'Il y a des miracles, et j'en ai vu'. One's life seems more perfect when one has seen what nature can do. The fellow was stupendous! I conceive him present. Who'll fire a house for me? Is it my deficiency of attraction, or a total dearth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... me, I beseech you, Needs there a school this modish art to teach you? No need of lessons now, the knowing think; We might as well be taught to eat and drink. Caused by a dearth of scandal, should the vapours Distress our fair ones—let them read the papers; Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit; Crave what you will—there's quantum sufficit. "Lord!" cries my Lady Wormwood (who loves tattle, And puts much salt and pepper in her prattle), Just risen at noon, ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... stopped further discussion for the time. Ives was sent aboard the schooner to lower sail and report. He came back with a staggering dearth of information. The boats were all there; the ship was intact—as intact as when Billy Edwards had taken charge—but the cheery, lovable ensign and his men had vanished without trace or clue. As to the how or the wherefore they might rack their brains without guessing. There was the beginning ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was continually changing. The excitement which had brought them together had in a measure subsided, and enlistments went on slowly. After a month's exertions, only five thousand names were enrolled; and Washington, lamenting the dearth of public spirit, almost despaired. Alluding to the selfishness exhibited in camp, he says: "Such stock-jobbing and fertility in all low arts, to obtain advantages of one kind and another, I never saw before, and pray God ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson

... and more important districts of the country. In a pamphlet printed in 1723, one hundred and thirty-seven years after the introduction of the potato, speaking of the fluctuation of the markets, the writer says: "We have always either a glut or a dearth; very often there are not ten days distance between the extremity of the one and the other; such a want of policy is there (in Dublin especially) on the most important affair of bread, without a plenty of which the poor must starve." If potatoes were at this time looked upon ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... one; sorry faring was that Which he, the harm-scather, had taken to Hart. The warrior-hall dinn'd now; unto all Danes there waxed, To the castle-abiders, to each of the keen ones, To all earls, as an ale-dearth. Now angry were both Of the fierce mighty warriors, far rang out the hall-house; 770 Then mickle the wonder it was that the wine-hall Withstood the two war-deer, nor welter'd to earth The fair earthly dwelling; ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous

... the time of the morning it could be no other but me. It was very strange! They compared notes respecting my appearance and dress. No two things could be more dissimilar. The Jew Christian, upon any dearth of subjects of intelligence, repeatedly ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... wee, of heaven's hue, The tulips white and yellow too, The dainty silver bell, The golden phlox as well— All sink upon the earth. Oh, what a sorry dearth! Beware, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... story shall be told Of direful ruin, loss, and dearth, There shall be said with pride and joy: "But man survived, and ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... Lack, want, need, deficiency, dearth, paucity, scarcity, deficit. Lame, crippled, halt, deformed, maimed, disabled. Large, great, big, huge, immense, colossal, gigantic, extensive, vast, massive, unwieldy, bulky. Laughable, comical, comic, farcical, ludicrous, ridiculous, funny, droll. Lead, guide, conduct, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... in some comfortable hotel, with a maid to wait upon you—I know of such a place—Adrian could not have been long in coming to fetch you. I should have had a letter ready to post to him the instant we landed. As to money," flushing boyishly, "that is the least consideration—there is no dearth of that to fear. If you prefer it I can, however, convey you somewhere upon the English coast after we quit St. Malo; but that will entail a longer residence for you here on board ship; and it is no ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... that, owing to the permissive nature of the British Anatomy Act, several boards of guardians will not allow even unclaimed bodies to be used for dissection and for the teaching of operative surgery. It is not popularly understood that a dearth of bodies means not only a check to abstract science, but a serious handicap to medical education, which must react more upon the poor than upon the rich, since the latter can afford to pay for the services of medical men educated abroad, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... to support and encourage His believing people, or as a Fatherly chastisement, to punish their iniquities, and excite them to greater piety and watchfulness. 'It pleased God,' said Edward Winslow, in speaking of this inflict ion, 'to send a great dearth for our further punishment.' Under this conviction, the congregation were called on by the Governor and the elders to set apart a day for special humiliation and prayer, in order to entreat the Lord to remove from them his chastening hand, and ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... revealed to Joel at the same time how Israel would be rescued from the famine. The winter following the seven years of dearth brought no relief, for the rain held back until the first day of the month of Nisan. When it began to fall, the prophet said to the people, "Go forth and sow seed!" But they remonstrated with him, "Shall one who hath saved a measure of wheat or two measures of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... decisive rule, they will draw the whole of that important trade into their own colonies; and even in the single instance in which they have allowed us to prescribe to them, namely, the embargo on grain, on the apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they acquiesced from the secret design of taking advantage of the general suspension, by exporting grain clandestinely under cover of their colors, which they knew would screen them from the rigorous examination of our officers. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... of hot, excited faces, ran quickly over the events of the last three or four days. Ten thousand people had sat there, hour after hour, waiting for the result, and now the result had come. The rival parties had entered their conventions, full of doubt and apprehension. There was a singular dearth of great men; the old ones were all dead or disabled, and the new ones had not appeared; the nation was conscious, too, of a new feeling, and all were bound to recognize it; the sense of dependency upon the Old World ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... swell the numbers of mankind. The effect, however, of this tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence, leads to still more serious evils amongst the poorer classes of society. It necessarily lowers the price of labor by reason of the supply exceeding the demand. It increases the dearth of provisions by making the demand greater than the supply, and produces direful consequences to a large class of persons who labor under the evils, physical and moral, of poverty. You find it, as described by a witness called yesterday, in the overcrowding of our cities ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... wonder at Shakspeare, and one or two more of that period, as solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own dearth of information that makes the waste; for there is no time more populous of intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, than the one we are speaking of. Shakspeare did not look upon himself in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his contemporaries ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Halifax. Its main cargo from this time forth will be food and other supplies for the American expeditionary forces. You will report to Captain Glenn as his first and second officers. As a result of the United States' declaration of war on Germany there is a dearth of young officers. Most of them have joined the naval forces of the nation. In reality, Captain Glenn is an American naval officer, and now that the United States has declared war, the Albatross may be classed as an American naval vessel. It has been heavily armed that it may make the voyages ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... things of which we lately chattered— The dearth of taxis or the dawn of Spring; Themes we discussed as though they really mattered, Like rationed meat ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... know'st y not, his looks are my soules food? Pitty the dearth that I haue pined in, By longing for that food so long a time. Didst thou but know the inly touch of Loue, Thou wouldst as soone goe kindle fire with snow As seeke to quench the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears." ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... god-daughter it was impressed on her that she ought to conform to his Church, and one of the many priests about the Court was appointed to instruct her. In the dearth of all intellectual intercourse, and the absolute deficiency of books, she could not but become deeply interested in the arguments. Her uncle had forearmed her with instruction, and she wrote to him on any difficulty which arose, and this became ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... eye than the old which lacks the visual force. When Eugenio was beginning author and used to talk with other adolescent immortals of the joyful and sorrowful mysteries of their high calling, the dearth of subjects was the cause of much misgiving and even despair among them. Upon a certain occasion one of that divine company, so much diviner than any of the sort now, made bold to affirm: "I feel that I have got my technique perfect. I believe that my poetic art will stand the test of any experiment ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... France all was ferment and disquiet. The Roman Catholic element, comprising the overwhelming majority of the people, had become split into two factions, both animated by inextinguishable hatred, and each resolved to compass the destruction of the other. Of conciliatory measures there was a dearth. Among the men of wide influence there was no one to take the place of the virtuous Michel de l'Hospital. That truly great statesman had died nine months before (on the thirteenth of March, 1573). The storm of war at that moment raging about La Rochelle ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... proclaiming her joy at returning to regions "where a body might at least look for decent victual," and Humility Cooper, Elizabeth Tilley's little cousin. The two seamen, Trevor and Ely, also returned, their year of service having expired; but in spite of the dearth of provision, already imminent owing to the unprovided condition of the new-comers, not one of the Pilgrims ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... of a manuscript became the subject of an embassy: Erasmus read by moonlight because he could not afford a torch, and begged a penny, not for the love of charity, but for the love of learning." But even then, when the enthusiasm and the will were there, such was the dearth of material for learning that, as in the case of Erasmus, the pioneers had practically nothing to work at but the classical texts and a few meagre vocabularies with etymologies of mediaeval scholarship. In 1491 Grocyn began to teach Greek at Oxford. In 1499 Erasmus ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... dearth of Fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... of those "waves of life" in which there is a sudden and inordinate increase in many forms of animal life. See "The Naturalist in La Plata" chapter 3.] The scarcity of beetles was very remarkable. The wet season set in a little earlier than usual, but I do not think that this caused the dearth of insects as at Juigalpa, where there had been scarcely any rain, there were very few compared with the two former years. The year before, when the season was nearly as wet, beetles, especially longicorns, had been very abundant; and the first half of 1872 ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt



Words linked to "Dearth" :   scarceness, want, paucity, shortage, deficiency, scarcity, famine



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