Dearth is a severe shortage or lack of something important. When there's a dearth of rain during summer, crops struggle to grow and rivers run low. When a teacher notices a dearth of volunteers for a class project, she means hardly anyone raised their hand.

The word carries weight beyond simple scarcity. A dearth suggests something is seriously missing, in quantities far below what's needed. You might run out of pencils, but you'd describe a dearth of medical supplies during an emergency, or a dearth of good ideas when your group project feels stuck.

Dearth often appears in phrases like “no dearth of,” which means plenty of something: “There was no dearth of enthusiasm when the teacher announced a pizza party.” This construction emphasizes abundance by contrasting it with shortage.

The opposite of dearth is abundance or plenty. While abundance suggests an overflowing supply, dearth points to a concerning emptiness. When historians write about a dearth of food in past centuries, they're describing serious hunger that affected entire communities. When someone describes a dearth of creativity in modern architecture, they mean buildings have become boringly similar, lacking the imagination that makes structures interesting to look at.