- dearth, famine, shortage - an acute insufficiency
--1 is a kind of lack, deficiency, want
- famine - a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death
--2 is a kind of calamity, catastrophe, disaster, tragedy, cataclysm
--2 has particulars:the Irish Famine, the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Great Calamity