Answer: What is the correct usage of the different "lack of" and "abundance" synonyms?
What is the correct usage of the different "lack of" and "abundance" synonyms?
If you've been reading this comm for a while, you probably know by now that English is a language that has lots of words that mean the same thing. It can be hard to get the precise meanings of different synonyms right. In this post, we'll look at the group of words that mean "to have a lot of something". We'll also look at the related set of words that mean "we don't have any of something".
Let's start out with words about having stuff! If we have an abundance, a cornucopia, a profusion, a plethora, a glut, a surplus, an excess, a surfeit, or a myriad, then we've got plenty of it and might even be overflowing with it. Let's look at the definitions for each of these words, and then see some examples of how they're used. Because they're synonyms, we're going to see them being mostly interchangeable with each other.
abundance: an extremely plentiful or oversufficient quantity or supply. This one's pretty basic--you probably know this one already. One thing to note here is that if you have an even more extremely plentiful supply than necessary, you might have an overabundance.
cornucopia: in mythology, a horn containing food, drink, etc., in endless supply; a representation of this horn, used as a symbol of abundance; an abundant, overflowing supply. The key to this one is remembering that horn thing. The cornucopia is the classic symbol of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US--a horn overflowing with food and things to eat. If you keep that in mind, you'll remember that this word is about having plenty.
profusion: abundance; abundant quantity; a great quantity or amount. Note that "abundance" shows up in the definition for "profusion". We'll see more of that, because we're talking about synonyms here--these words mean the same thing with only minor differences. (Also, note that "profusion" is different from "perfusion".)
plethora: overabundance; excess. Yep, there's that abundance again. Note that "plethora" leans past "having plenty" towards "having too much".
glut: a full supply; an excessive supply or amount; an act of feeding or filling to excess. This one should be easy to remember: where there's a glut of something, there's probably a glutton eating it all. The more common word tends to be "glutton", so if you're familiar with that, you can remember that these two are related and you'll be all set.
surplus: something that remains above what is used or needed. Still firmly in the "too much" category.
excess: an extreme or excessive amount or degree; superabundance. Yes, these words certainly are synonyms.
surfeit: excess; an excessive amount; excess or overindulgence in eating or drinking. I'm beginning to think we have an overabundance of these synonyms!
myriad: a very great or indefinitely great number of persons or things; innumerable. This one's a little different--it's less about how much stuff we have and more about just counting things.
Here's a plethora of examples of these words in action (see, there's totally a lot of them!):
Although by everyone else's standards Hermione had an abundance of books, she always thought she could use a few more.
After Ron belched up slugs all day, there was certainly an overabundance of them in Gryffindor tower.
The Weasley twins' joke shop offered a cornucopia of prank-playing options.
With beautiful whores in great profusion all around him, Jayne felt he could stay on this planet for quite a while.
Mal had a plethora of reasons not to like Simon, but he only needed one reason to keep him around: his crew needed a doctor.
When Crabbe and Goyle saw the glut of chocolate frogs covering the table, they couldn't help but to run over and start stuffing themselves like the gluttons they were.
"I surely don't have a surplus of time or patience at the moment," Mal said. "You got something to say to me, best come out and say it."
"I'd say you don't have an excess of intelligence, either, Captain," Wash retorted.
"Enough of this surfeit of speechifying! Are we going to have dinner or not?" Shepherd Book asked.
Zoe and Wash stood by the console, looking out at the myriad stars spread across the 'verse before them.
I think you get the idea. Other than "myriad", these words can largely stand in for each other. If you have a bunch of things, you can replace "bunch" with "abundance", "plethora", or one of the others and it'll make sense. Try to keep a sense of which words refer to regular ol' abundance, and which refer to overabundance, so that you can indicate when you've got too much of something--and if you get confused, you'll always be safe just saying you've got an abundance or an overabundance.
I think things can get tricky when you're working with sarcastic characters. If you see the sample conversation among the Firefly characters above--well, everybody on Firefly is sarcastic all the time. When Wash says Mal doesn't have an excess of intelligence, what he's saying is that Mal is lacking in brains. Don't get mixed up here! "Excess" still means "plenty". If you run into sarcastic characters using words you're not sure of, try substituting "plenty" or "lots" for the strange word. If you're writing those sarcastic characters, try using "plenty" in your first draft to avoid confusion and then going back later and adding in a synonym for a different effect.
So, if Mal doesn't have an excess of intelligence, then what does he have? Perhaps he has a lack, an absence, a dearth, a scarcity, a paucity, or a shortage of intelligence, or even a void where his brain ought to be! Let's take a look at these words.
lack: deficiency or absence of something needed, desirable, or customary. This is the most basic of the words in this set. If you lack it, you don't have it.
absence: lack; deficiency. The first meaning that might come to mind for this word might be an absence from school, but it can also mean a more general lack of something. Remember that if you're absent, you're not there!
void: an empty space; emptiness; something experienced as a loss; a gap or opening, as in a wall; a vacancy. If you have a void, there is an empty space where something should be. (Like, for example, Mal's skull, which is occasionally full of empty space.)
dearth: an inadequate supply; scarcity; lack; scarcity and dearness of food; famine. This is a word that is often confused--sometimes people mistakenly use it when they meant to use "abundance". Remember that "dearth" is about not having enough. Here's one trick that might work: "dearth" includes the word "dear", and when food is dear, you don't have enough of it!
scarcity: insufficiency or shortness of supply; dearth; rarity; infrequency. This word is related to "scarce"--when something's scarce, there's very little of it.
paucity: smallness of quantity; scarcity; scantiness; smallness or insufficiency of number; fewness. This word goes along with "dearth" and "scarcity"--they all mean that there may be a little bit of something, but not nearly enough.
shortage: a deficiency in quantity. Again, very similar to the others above.
And here's a cornucopia of examples:
Mal stood alone under the hot desert sun and experienced a severe lack of clothing. "That went well," he thought.
When Harry tripped on the rug, Malfoy teased him, of course, but the absence of any real malice in his voice showed that his thoughts were elsewhere.
River stood on the bridge and gazed out at the dark. "The void, a vacant maw waiting to swallow us," she muttered. "It does look a sight empty out there," Mal agreed.
"If we don't get these engines running soon, there's going to be a serious dearth of light, heat, and air on this junkheap!" Wash shouted.
"While there's surely no scarcity of wild ideas around here," Mal said, "I'm having trouble settling on one we'd have a chance of succeeding at."
Even with Hermione's bottomless purse, she and Harry both knew they'd have a paucity of supplies pretty soon. One of them would need to risk going to town to buy some food.
Mal's clothing shortage earned him some strange looks when Serenity finally arrived to rescue his naked self.
As we saw with the "abundance" synonyms, the "lack" synonyms can largely substitute for each other. In fact, I rearranged these sentences several times--the sentence about Hermione's purse started out as the "dearth" sentence, and the one where Mal's complaining about the scarcity of a workable plan originally had the word "lack". As I wrote them, I moved them around and substituted different synonyms that sounded better. You can mostly do that with these. I'd just be careful with "absence" and "void"--the others all leave room for there to be a little bit, but not nearly enough, while "absence" and "void" indicate a total nothingness, a big blank empty spot.
Again, too, be careful with sarcasm--having no scarcity of something means you've got it in abundance!
We've seen here that there are quite a few words that all mean "to have plenty of" something, and also quite a few words that mean "to not have enough". I don't have any easy tricks for you to remember which are which; the best I can recommend is to get at least a few of them ingrained in your head, even if just the simplest ones like "abundance" and "lack". Then you'll be able to consult a dictionary or thesaurus to check yourself in your writing and make sure you're using the right words, or to find a good and correct word to substitute.
A word of caution, though: while we've just explored the wonderful world of synonyms, be careful not to get too thesaurus-happy in your writing! Substituting a word that doesn't fit with a character's natural vocabulary will sound out of place in your dialogue, and similarly, using a word that doesn't fit with your own natural vocabulary will sound out of place in your prose. This is a big reason why I mixed up many of the examples above as I was writing: a straight-talking character like Mal might use a word like "surplus" or "scarcity", but "surfeit" just sounded too intellectual for him to say, so instead I gave Shepherd Book that line. I felt similarly about the word "paucity", so I didn't use it in dialogue, but put it in a descriptive sentence instead. Think carefully about how you use synonyms and if it really serves your writing to stick a fancier word in there!
To sum up: make sure you're using the correct synonym in the right place (and not "dearth" when you mean "abundance"). If you're going to substitute, make sure to choose the right synonym for the voice of your character and for your writing style.
Definitions found on dictionary.com. Another great resource I consulted was their sister site, thesaurus.com.
If you've been reading this comm for a while, you probably know by now that English is a language that has lots of words that mean the same thing. It can be hard to get the precise meanings of different synonyms right. In this post, we'll look at the group of words that mean "to have a lot of something". We'll also look at the related set of words that mean "we don't have any of something".
Let's start out with words about having stuff! If we have an abundance, a cornucopia, a profusion, a plethora, a glut, a surplus, an excess, a surfeit, or a myriad, then we've got plenty of it and might even be overflowing with it. Let's look at the definitions for each of these words, and then see some examples of how they're used. Because they're synonyms, we're going to see them being mostly interchangeable with each other.
abundance: an extremely plentiful or oversufficient quantity or supply. This one's pretty basic--you probably know this one already. One thing to note here is that if you have an even more extremely plentiful supply than necessary, you might have an overabundance.
cornucopia: in mythology, a horn containing food, drink, etc., in endless supply; a representation of this horn, used as a symbol of abundance; an abundant, overflowing supply. The key to this one is remembering that horn thing. The cornucopia is the classic symbol of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US--a horn overflowing with food and things to eat. If you keep that in mind, you'll remember that this word is about having plenty.
profusion: abundance; abundant quantity; a great quantity or amount. Note that "abundance" shows up in the definition for "profusion". We'll see more of that, because we're talking about synonyms here--these words mean the same thing with only minor differences. (Also, note that "profusion" is different from "perfusion".)
plethora: overabundance; excess. Yep, there's that abundance again. Note that "plethora" leans past "having plenty" towards "having too much".
glut: a full supply; an excessive supply or amount; an act of feeding or filling to excess. This one should be easy to remember: where there's a glut of something, there's probably a glutton eating it all. The more common word tends to be "glutton", so if you're familiar with that, you can remember that these two are related and you'll be all set.
surplus: something that remains above what is used or needed. Still firmly in the "too much" category.
excess: an extreme or excessive amount or degree; superabundance. Yes, these words certainly are synonyms.
surfeit: excess; an excessive amount; excess or overindulgence in eating or drinking. I'm beginning to think we have an overabundance of these synonyms!
myriad: a very great or indefinitely great number of persons or things; innumerable. This one's a little different--it's less about how much stuff we have and more about just counting things.
Here's a plethora of examples of these words in action (see, there's totally a lot of them!):
Although by everyone else's standards Hermione had an abundance of books, she always thought she could use a few more.
After Ron belched up slugs all day, there was certainly an overabundance of them in Gryffindor tower.
The Weasley twins' joke shop offered a cornucopia of prank-playing options.
With beautiful whores in great profusion all around him, Jayne felt he could stay on this planet for quite a while.
Mal had a plethora of reasons not to like Simon, but he only needed one reason to keep him around: his crew needed a doctor.
When Crabbe and Goyle saw the glut of chocolate frogs covering the table, they couldn't help but to run over and start stuffing themselves like the gluttons they were.
"I surely don't have a surplus of time or patience at the moment," Mal said. "You got something to say to me, best come out and say it."
"I'd say you don't have an excess of intelligence, either, Captain," Wash retorted.
"Enough of this surfeit of speechifying! Are we going to have dinner or not?" Shepherd Book asked.
Zoe and Wash stood by the console, looking out at the myriad stars spread across the 'verse before them.
I think you get the idea. Other than "myriad", these words can largely stand in for each other. If you have a bunch of things, you can replace "bunch" with "abundance", "plethora", or one of the others and it'll make sense. Try to keep a sense of which words refer to regular ol' abundance, and which refer to overabundance, so that you can indicate when you've got too much of something--and if you get confused, you'll always be safe just saying you've got an abundance or an overabundance.
I think things can get tricky when you're working with sarcastic characters. If you see the sample conversation among the Firefly characters above--well, everybody on Firefly is sarcastic all the time. When Wash says Mal doesn't have an excess of intelligence, what he's saying is that Mal is lacking in brains. Don't get mixed up here! "Excess" still means "plenty". If you run into sarcastic characters using words you're not sure of, try substituting "plenty" or "lots" for the strange word. If you're writing those sarcastic characters, try using "plenty" in your first draft to avoid confusion and then going back later and adding in a synonym for a different effect.
So, if Mal doesn't have an excess of intelligence, then what does he have? Perhaps he has a lack, an absence, a dearth, a scarcity, a paucity, or a shortage of intelligence, or even a void where his brain ought to be! Let's take a look at these words.
lack: deficiency or absence of something needed, desirable, or customary. This is the most basic of the words in this set. If you lack it, you don't have it.
absence: lack; deficiency. The first meaning that might come to mind for this word might be an absence from school, but it can also mean a more general lack of something. Remember that if you're absent, you're not there!
void: an empty space; emptiness; something experienced as a loss; a gap or opening, as in a wall; a vacancy. If you have a void, there is an empty space where something should be. (Like, for example, Mal's skull, which is occasionally full of empty space.)
dearth: an inadequate supply; scarcity; lack; scarcity and dearness of food; famine. This is a word that is often confused--sometimes people mistakenly use it when they meant to use "abundance". Remember that "dearth" is about not having enough. Here's one trick that might work: "dearth" includes the word "dear", and when food is dear, you don't have enough of it!
scarcity: insufficiency or shortness of supply; dearth; rarity; infrequency. This word is related to "scarce"--when something's scarce, there's very little of it.
paucity: smallness of quantity; scarcity; scantiness; smallness or insufficiency of number; fewness. This word goes along with "dearth" and "scarcity"--they all mean that there may be a little bit of something, but not nearly enough.
shortage: a deficiency in quantity. Again, very similar to the others above.
And here's a cornucopia of examples:
Mal stood alone under the hot desert sun and experienced a severe lack of clothing. "That went well," he thought.
When Harry tripped on the rug, Malfoy teased him, of course, but the absence of any real malice in his voice showed that his thoughts were elsewhere.
River stood on the bridge and gazed out at the dark. "The void, a vacant maw waiting to swallow us," she muttered. "It does look a sight empty out there," Mal agreed.
"If we don't get these engines running soon, there's going to be a serious dearth of light, heat, and air on this junkheap!" Wash shouted.
"While there's surely no scarcity of wild ideas around here," Mal said, "I'm having trouble settling on one we'd have a chance of succeeding at."
Even with Hermione's bottomless purse, she and Harry both knew they'd have a paucity of supplies pretty soon. One of them would need to risk going to town to buy some food.
Mal's clothing shortage earned him some strange looks when Serenity finally arrived to rescue his naked self.
As we saw with the "abundance" synonyms, the "lack" synonyms can largely substitute for each other. In fact, I rearranged these sentences several times--the sentence about Hermione's purse started out as the "dearth" sentence, and the one where Mal's complaining about the scarcity of a workable plan originally had the word "lack". As I wrote them, I moved them around and substituted different synonyms that sounded better. You can mostly do that with these. I'd just be careful with "absence" and "void"--the others all leave room for there to be a little bit, but not nearly enough, while "absence" and "void" indicate a total nothingness, a big blank empty spot.
Again, too, be careful with sarcasm--having no scarcity of something means you've got it in abundance!
We've seen here that there are quite a few words that all mean "to have plenty of" something, and also quite a few words that mean "to not have enough". I don't have any easy tricks for you to remember which are which; the best I can recommend is to get at least a few of them ingrained in your head, even if just the simplest ones like "abundance" and "lack". Then you'll be able to consult a dictionary or thesaurus to check yourself in your writing and make sure you're using the right words, or to find a good and correct word to substitute.
A word of caution, though: while we've just explored the wonderful world of synonyms, be careful not to get too thesaurus-happy in your writing! Substituting a word that doesn't fit with a character's natural vocabulary will sound out of place in your dialogue, and similarly, using a word that doesn't fit with your own natural vocabulary will sound out of place in your prose. This is a big reason why I mixed up many of the examples above as I was writing: a straight-talking character like Mal might use a word like "surplus" or "scarcity", but "surfeit" just sounded too intellectual for him to say, so instead I gave Shepherd Book that line. I felt similarly about the word "paucity", so I didn't use it in dialogue, but put it in a descriptive sentence instead. Think carefully about how you use synonyms and if it really serves your writing to stick a fancier word in there!
To sum up: make sure you're using the correct synonym in the right place (and not "dearth" when you mean "abundance"). If you're going to substitute, make sure to choose the right synonym for the voice of your character and for your writing style.
Definitions found on dictionary.com. Another great resource I consulted was their sister site, thesaurus.com.