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Use famine in a sentence

Definition of famine:

  • (noun) an acute insufficiency
  • (noun) a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death

Sentence Examples:

Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally occur in the southern and middle portions of the State.

Nature has fitted the wolf-breed for famine, and in ordinary temperature Gray Wolf could have lived for a fortnight without food.

If the war was short a wheat famine would come afterward; if it was long, the famine would come before the war ended.

Then the wolves would gather on a snow-drift just outside the village and raise a howl, a frightful wail of famine and disappointment, that made the air shudder.

That was the time he needed dinners, and went weak and faint for lack of them and lost weight from sheer famine.

He calculated that cold, famine, and sickness would help the work of the sword, and that after the rebels had been well hounded for two winters the following summer would find the country peaceful.

Under the ravening madness of famine, legal restraints and moral principles were forgotten, and famine riots broke out.

She makes a walk of war and a sport of danger, an ease of labor and a jest of death: she makes famine but abstinence, want but a patience, sickness but a purge, and death a puff.

The truth was, that a famine had arisen; and it is well known, on those occasions, as necessity has no law, that the stronger kills the weaker.

The sufferings of famine and fatigue, however, are followed by those of disease; the strength of many is laid low.

Abundance and famine travel the earth hard upon each other's heels, and it is not surprising that he who lives by his wits should sometimes fail of his harvest, as well as he who lives by his hands.

Roscoe thought of smallpox, the terrible plague that usually follows northern famine, and a shiver ran through him.

The fathers and mothers of most of them died during the famine, and he is teaching them useful trades.

That has been the subject of severe criticism also, because the people were only slowly recovering from the effect of an awful famine.

It was built in 1784, the year of the great famine, in order to give labor and wages to a hungry people, and is one solid mass of concrete of simple form and still simpler construction.

The result of this was that there was a terrible famine, in which hundreds of people and animals died, little children being the first to suffer.

The story does not tell how they all got food whilst the famine was going on, though it is very evident that they were not starved, for the baby boy grew fast and was a strong healthy little fellow.

For those that try to brave the winter, the portion is famine and cold; the vast, far-spreading silence broken only by the sobbing song of the wolf pack, starving and afraid on the distant ridges.

If the latter should think a war a good diversion to their enterprises, I should not be surprised if they went on, especially if a bankruptcy follows famine.

They had once possessed a little property, but in the time of famine they had parted with their lands, their houses, and their vineyards like the rest.

Here they ate their last bit of fresh meat, the remainder of a deer they had killed a day or two before; they reserved for their final resort, in case of famine, a small piece of salt pork.

It was still a reality rather than a memory to them; they could feel, even in this hot summer evening and round this dinner-table, the chill of its snows, and the pinch of famine.

This plague and famine would sweep off a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to thrive on.

This pitiful condition was soon changed, abundance replaced famine, and the master returned to live in his domain.

We learn from them that many fled from society, not to become holy, but to escape slavery and famine; and that many were lazy and immoral.

There was a real desire for knowledge, though hindered by the prevailing famine caused by the want of rain.

New plans of relief in times of scarcity and famine have also greatly helped in some districts to win the confidence of the people.

If the snow had held for a sufficient number of days it might have been in a state of famine.

Eighteen were drowned when she was wrecked, five were lost in the small boat, and thirty-four died of famine.

Likewise in time of famine and distress, during which they may have given relatives food only a few times, they have sold the latter for their slaves.

At length one of the mules, being about to give out from fatigue and famine, they hastened to dispatch him.

In concluding my remarks on famines, I may say that the whole question regarding them is of the greatest practical importance to all employers of labor in India.

Meantime, from the effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon the pelvic basin of my frame.

As for the herds, no one had the faintest idea where they might be upon the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in the face.

These matters were of the highest importance; peace or war, famine or plenty, might depend upon the weather of the next few months.

From seventeen to thirty are thirteen, to which add the seven years of plenty and the two years of famine, which make the sum total of twenty-two.

There, too, he still was when a famine fell upon the land, like "the first famine that was in the days of Abraham."

I did not argue that the Corn Law was the cause of famine, that it was the cause of disease, that it was the cause of crime, that it was the cause of mortality, in this country.

Let any one look at the tables of our exports of food during the famine years, and he will see how the case stood.

It was to be expected, that the alarm about the Potato Blight and the Famine would be first raised through the public Press.

Another mode of acquiring information adopted by the Author was, to visit those parts of the country in which the Famine had raged with the greatest severity.

The famine of 1741 did not deter farmers from the culture of the potato; on the contrary, it increased rapidly after that period, and we now find it, for the first time, recognized as a rotation crop.

Four of these had to be enlarged by one half during the famine, and the fifth, an entirely new one, became also necessary, that there might be ground enough wherein to inter the famine-slain people.

I say, I do not believe that, among us, such a thing could happen, but death through famine would be received in the same way as any mortal disease

Jacob mourned long and bitterly for Joseph, and then he and his sons lived on much as they had been doing until there was a famine in the land and no food was to be had.

If there were a famine, there might be some reason for eating garbage, but the land is full of bread.

By the complicated distresses of fatigue, sickness, and famine, the three ships that escaped lost the greatest part of their men.

The cigarette famine that had made such a misery of the day was only typical of many things; anything that caused him the least anxiety lost him both nerve and temper, and he was only in the way.

Even now, I do not know of one man, woman, or child that has perished from famine: fewer, if any, I believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by accident.

There has been found a record of the years of famine and the Pharaohs of the time have been determined.

Kate sat at the head and I at the foot of the round table, and I must confess that we were apt to have either a feast or a famine, for at first we often forgot to provide our dinners.

Famine, in all cases the source and origin of contagion, had done, and was still doing, its work.

We can only say, that the famine crowds of that awful year should have been seen in order to have been understood and felt.

The father of the family was laid low upon the bed of sickness, and those of his little ones who escaped it were almost consumed by famine.

There is abundant and fertile land in these islands where droughts, floods, and famine years, are practically unknown.

Nearly twenty times as much tea must be drunk now in Kerry as in the early sixties, and so far as I can recollect tea was unknown, not only in the cabins but among the farmers until after the famine.

Neither of these items was really needed this year; but as they are our insurance against disease and famine, I secured them early and at low prices.

Ages in which the sense of formal significance has been swamped utterly by preoccupation with the obvious, will turn out, I suspect, to have been ages of spiritual famine.

Scurvy, that fatal consequence of famine and exhaustion, soon broke out among the passengers, and many died of it.

There came a very bad year, and the famine was so great that these poor people resolved to rid themselves of their children.

Twenty million people, in twenty-two provinces, were reduced to absolute starvation by the famine of 1906, and were kept alive only by governmental relief on a colossal scale.

To what then must we attribute this delay, when famine, disease and the winter, and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?

He was a mechanic; and, rendered unable to attend to the occupation which supplied his necessities, famine was added to his other miseries.

Yet what more natural than famine, as I watched in this chamber of mortality, placed in a world of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life?

Doubtless, plenty of work will be found for younger hands, besides absolute fighting, but I think not that there will be much fighting, save against famine.

Famine followed, with sickness in its train, and the neighboring slave-dealers added all they could to the sufferings of the settlement.

A veritable reign of terror prevailed everywhere, and while the crops were destroyed famine stalked throughout the land.

The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had been practiced for several hundred years.

He felt himself constrained to sell some of the materials he had collected for this purpose, to obtain money for the relief of the poor during a famine.

Scarcely any land had been cleared, so that it was impossible by means of agriculture alone to provide against famine in the winter.

Often crops are referred to, and according as the conditions are favorable or not, fertility or famine is predicted in the official reports.

The morning was glorious, and to the great satisfaction of all, game was seen to be sufficiently plentiful to set famine at defiance.

Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two days' halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers.

She wished her three wishes: to see Randal, to win him back from Fairyland, and to help the people in the famine.

The famine of a world too full will lay it waste; but it is here a little while longer still.

For seven years of plenty this was done, and after that there came upon the land and upon all the lands round about seven years of famine; and only in the land of Egypt was there corn for the people.

Where the tempest drove them, there they helplessly wandered, and many men died from famine and exposure.

What, then, in the form of provisions proper for human food, such as even a famine-driven stomach could deal with, was I likely to find in her?

It was North Bergen, Norway, that Rodgers chose for this purpose; and an unfortunate choice it proved to be, for a famine prevailed in the country, and only water could be obtained for the ship.

Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind.

The same famine in the land seemed to prevail; the same lack of apparently everything which I should have wanted.

Many a fabric of manufacture, many an article of diet, many an ingenious process has been suggested in days of scarcity and famine.

The lords then insisted on payment in cash, and they insisted on estimating this payment at the famine price of the grain.

The fear of famine soon became a panic, and flour speedily rose from twenty dollars per sack of one hundred pounds to one hundred and ten dollars in gold.

The demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with a labor famine in spite of the large immigration.

They showed us new ways in the catching of fish and the killing of bear which were thick in the woods; and they taught us to lay by bigger stores for the time of famine.

Some sold off grain they had laid up in store for a famine, and the May sun shone so warmly, they planted considerable corn, expecting speculation.

Famine had never yet taken its flight from Florence, and all distress, by its long continuance, was getting harder to bear; disease was spreading in the crowded city, and the Plague was expected.

Much is said of plagues and earthquakes, of drought, flood, frost and famine, with a thousand more natural evils.

When there was famine, as of old, the Indians came groaning to the large house and went away content.

The women say that to behold her is to behold the corpse of one that has died in famine-time.

Reduced to great distress by famine, Champlain surrendered, and the whole settlement was taken captive to England.

Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books.

South Africa was to celebrate peace and loyalty at the same time and the great centers of Australia were not behind the rest of the Empire despite the existing gloom of drafts and sheep famine.

Most of the food had been left behind; and famine and starvation had cut off so many, that the remainder were too few to bury the dead.

Morning and evening the ravens came bringing bread and meat, and the brook brought him water out of the rock, but as there was no rain, the brook at last dried up, and there was a great famine.

Send a man, trustworthy and speedy, to the North, to Ulster, where I hear the famine is less terrible, and let him buy what cattle he can find, and drive them back as soon as may be.

The plague which had desolated it twenty-five years before now threatened to be succeeded by a still more fatal plague, that of famine.

A war of this kind numbers its slain by millions, for the victims of famine are victims of political crime on the part of a nation's rulers.

They thus hoped to subdue the belly by famine; but they found that they and all the other parts of the body suffered as much.