privation

/praɪˈveɪʃən/

Other forms: privations

If you're lacking the basic necessities of life — food, water, political freedom, and so on — you're suffering from privation.

Privation has become a rather old-fashioned word, and these days the word is often used with irony: present day privations are usually of the order of not having wireless Internet or video games. It's interesting to compare privation with the similar word deprivation, which is used more commonly now. Deprivation usually suggests that someone or something has actually caused the privation.

Definitions of privation

1. noun

   act of depriving someone of food or money or rights
   “nutritional privation”

   synonyms: deprivation

   types:

   impoverishment, pauperisation, pauperization

   the act of making someone poor

   starvation, starving

   the act of depriving of food or subjecting to famine

   type of:

   social control

   control exerted (actively or passively) by group action
2. noun

   a state of extreme poverty
   synonyms: deprivation, neediness, want

   type of:

   impoverishment, poorness, poverty

   the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions