• Deficiency

    Pronunciation

    • RP enPR: dÄ­fĭʹshÉ™nsÄ­, IPA: /dɪˈfɪʃənsi/

    Origin

    deficit + -ency

    Full definition of deficiency

    Noun

    deficiency

    (countable and uncountable; plural deficiencys)
    1. (uncountable) Inadequacy or incompleteness.
      • 1963, Margery Allingham, The China Governess Chapter 17, The face which emerged was not reassuring. â€¦. He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.
    2. (countable) An insufficiency, especially of something essential to health.
      • 2013-08-31, Promotion and self-promotion, One of academia’s deficiencies is that, though its lecture halls and graduate schools are replete with women, its higher echelons are not. Often, this is seen as a phenomenon specific to the sciences. … In fact, the disparity applies to the whole grove. Another report from 2006, by the American Association of University Professors, found the same ratio in the faculties of arts, humanities and social science, too.
    3. (geometry) The amount by which the number of double points on a curve is short of the maximum for curves of the same degree.

    Antonyms

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