famine

English Thesaurus

1. a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death (noun.event)

hypernym	:	calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, disaster, tragedy,
definition	:	an event resulting in great loss and misfortune (noun.event)

hyponym	:	the great calamity, the great hunger, the great starvation, the irish famine,
definition	:	a famine in Ireland resulting from a potato blight; between 1846 and 1851 a million people starved to death and 1.6 million emigrated (most to America) (noun.event)

2. an acute insufficiency (noun.state)

hypernym	:	deficiency, lack, want,
definition	:	the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable (noun.state)