English edit

Etymology edit

From deficient +‎ -cy. Compare Latin dēficientia.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

deficiency (countable and uncountable, plural deficiencies)

  1. (uncountable) Inadequacy or incompleteness.
  2. (countable) An insufficiency, especially of something essential to health.
    • 2013 August 31, “Promotion and self-promotion”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8851:
      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.
  4. (geometry) The codimension of a linear system in the corresponding complete linear system.

Antonyms edit

Derived terms edit

Translations edit

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Further reading edit