Word Direct Answers

What does "lack" mean?

Lack: Deficiency; want; need; destitution; failure; as, a lack of sufficient food. She swooneth now and now for lakke of blood. Chaucer. Let his lack of years be no impediment. Shak.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To blame; to find fault with. [Obs.] Love them and lakke them not. Piers Plowman.
  2. 3.To be without or destitute of; to want; to need. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. James i.
  3. 4.1. To be wanting; often, impersonally, with of, meaning, to be less than, short, not quite, etc. What hour now I think it lacks of twelve. Shak. Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty. Gen. xvii.
  4. 5.2. To be in want. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger. Ps. xxxiv.
  5. 6.Exclamation of regret or surprise. [Prov. Eng.] Cowper.

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