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dearth
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show 43 more with this conextual meaning
  • There were fewer horses and camels to be seen, and a dearth of palanquins, but the streets teemed with children, beggars, and skinny dogs the color of sand.†   (source)
  • Many thousands then perished, but the Days of Dearth (1158-60) were at the time of this tale long past and the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty.†   (source)
  • He expounded on the lack of morality in the young, the dearth of organized religion in the home, the school, the workplace.†   (source)
  • She didn't like recalling how he'd laughed at her, but when she had such a dearth of material, she needed every detail, uncomfortable or not.†   (source)
  • Every day they grow more convinced that the dearth of bad news about Cuba is a conspiracy by the leftist media to keep international support for El Líder strong.†   (source)
  • The mere ten executions a day were due not to a dearth of candidates but to the necessity of trying them, and to the difficulty of transporting paperwork and documentation to and from Rome.†   (source)
  • If there is a dearth of bats, the pigeon must serve us for the offering.†   (source)
  • The physician had asked McAllister how he expected to replace him — there was a dearth of competent doctors in Macao.†   (source)
  • wrung from him and dashed out against the harsh wall of air around him, as if he dared God to hear him and resent his resentment: When I had my defiance given The sun stood trembling in heaven The moon that glowed remote below Became leprous and white as snow And every soul of men on the earth Felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth God flamed in my path and the Sun was hot With the bows of my mind and the arrows of thought My bowstring fierce with ardor breathes My arrows glow in their golden sheaves My brothers and father march before The heavens drop with human gore— "Stop!"†   (source)
  • Since there was an obvious dearth of volunteers, I called on a diminutive boy named Saul, a seventh grader who looked no older than six.†   (source)
  • The dearth of interest might have to do with holiday distractions.
  • There's never a dearth of campaign promises.
  • All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs.†   (source)
  • "May your skull be dark!" the rabbi intoned in short frenzied yelps, "and your eyes be dark and your fate be of such dearth and darkness that you will call a poppy-seed the sun and a carroway the moon.†   (source)
  • The repeating voices in his head, which he could not shut off—the lack of privacy, under which others ate from his stomach while others again sang in his brain—the dreary blank which replaced feeling—the dearth of all but two values—the total monotony more than the wickedness: these had begun to kill the joy of life which belonged to his boyhood.†   (source)
  • They ran: THE IMMORTALS Ever reeking from the vales of earth Ascends to us life's fevered surge, Wealth's excess, the rage of dearth, Smoke of death meals on the gallow's verge; Greed without end, imprisoned air; Murderers' hands, usurers' hands, hands of prayer; Exhales in foetid breath the human swarm Whipped on by fear and lust, blood raw, blood warm, Breathing blessedness and savage heats, Eating itself and spewing what it eats, Hatching war and lovely art, Decking out with idiot craze Bawdy houses while they blaze, Through the childish fair-time mart Weltering to its own decay In the glare of pleasure's way, Rising for each newborn and then Sinking for each to dust again.†   (source)
  • And oh, this dearth of the human physiognomy!†   (source)
  • Yet the world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' who haven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of the dearth.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • He showed me tattoo marks, baring his breast in the teeth of the wind and in spite of my remonstrances, for I thought it was enough to kill him; he swore horribly whenever he remembered, but more like a silly schoolboy than a man; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done: stealthy thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him.†   (source)
  • And indeed a man of Claggart's accomplishments, without prior nautical experience, entering the navy at mature life, as he did, and necessarily allotted at the start to the lowest grade in it; a man, too, who never made allusion to his previous life ashore; these were circumstances which in the dearth of exact knowledge as to his true antecedents opened to the invidious a vague field for unfavorable surmise.†   (source)
  • The dearth of strong moral character, of unbending righteousness, he felt, was their great shortcoming, and here he would begin.†   (source)
  • The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: "Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of corruption; fertility may come of that, whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls once held the great supporters.†   (source)
  • To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow.†   (source)
  • But the most interesting object of all was, perhaps, the open scrapbook, displayed in the midst of some theatrical duodecimos that were strewn upon the table; and pasted into which scrapbook were various critical notices of Miss Snevellicci's acting, extracted from different provincial journals, together with one poetic address in her honour, commencing— Sing, God of Love, and tell me in what dearth Thrice-gifted SNEVELLICCI came on earth, To thrill us with her smile, her tear, her eye, Sing, God of Love, and tell me quickly why.†   (source)
  • Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather fortifying.†   (source)
  • I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said.†   (source)
  • In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created.†   (source)
  • In the way of movement and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver protected by a waterproof cap over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post-office, together with an editor and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea-captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip.†   (source)
  • The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano.†   (source)
  • Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House having, probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston.†   (source)
  • They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore.†   (source)
  • Even the latter, in the United States, is often pronounced to rhyme with /dearth/.†   (source)
  • Pity the dearth that I have pined in By longing for that food so long a time.†   (source)
  • Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.†   (source)
  • And Saint Gregory saith, that precious clothing is culpable for the dearth [dearness] of it, and for its softness, and for its strangeness and disguising, and for the superfluity or for the inordinate scantness of it; alas!†   (source)
  • The first and the mildest course is, by keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it, whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases: and if the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with great stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping into cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces.†   (source)
  • I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.†   (source)
  • 41:54 And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.†   (source)
  • To sojourn in that land
    He comes, invited by a younger son
    In time of dearth, a son whose worthy deeds
    Raise him to be the second in that realm
    Of Pharaoh.†   (source)
  • Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' the Nile By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth Or foison follow: the higher Nilus swells The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest.†   (source)
  • But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.†   (source)
  • This Paradise I give thee, count it thine
    To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat:
    Of every tree that in the garden grows
    Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth:
    But of the tree whose operation brings
    Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set
    The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith,
    Amid the garden by the tree of life,
    Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste,
    And shun the bitter consequence: for know,
    The day thou eatest thereof, my sole command
    Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die,
    From that day mortal; and this happy state
    Shalt lose, expelled from hence into a world
    Of woe and sorrow.†   (source)
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