lack

/læk/

/læk/

Other forms: lacking; lacked; lacks

If you lack something, you need or want something that's missing. When there's a lack of food, people starve.

There are a lot of things lacking in the world. If you have no video games, then you're lacking them. People who are thirsty and starving lack food and water. Many people lack money and health care. A lack of something is the opposite of an abundance of something. If you have plenty of books, then you don't lack them — though you may lack enough time to read them all.

Definitions of lack

1. noun

   the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable
   “there is a serious lack of insight into the problem”

   synonyms: deficiency, want

   types:

   absence

   the state of being absent

   dearth, famine, shortage

   an acute insufficiency

   deficit

   a deficiency or failure in neurological or mental functioning

   mineral deficiency

   lack of a mineral micronutrient that is essential for normal nutrition or metabolism

   shortness

   the condition of being short of something

   stringency, tightness

   a state occasioned by scarcity of money and a shortage of credit

   nonoccurrence

   absence by virtue of not occurring

   awayness

   the state of being elsewhere than in particular place

   sideropenia

   a deficiency of iron; results from inadequate iron in the diet or from hemorrhage

   type of:

   demand, need

   a condition requiring relief
2. verb

   be without
   “This soup lacks salt”

   synonyms: miss

   types:

   want

   be without, lack; be deficient in

   exclude

   lack or fail to include