[ US /dɪˈfɪʃənt/ ]
[ UK /dɪfˈɪʃənt/ ]
ADJECTIVE
  1. inadequate in amount or degree
    tested and found wanting
    lacking in stamina
    deficient in common sense
    a deficient education
  2. falling short of some prescribed norm
    substandard housing
  3. of a quantity not able to fulfill a need or requirement
    insufficient funds

How To Use deficient In A Sentence

  • Emphasizing elimination through the overuse of purgatives in an already deficient individual can further deplete the body's store of minerals and essential B vitamins as well as imbalance beneficial intestinal micro-organisms.
  • For example, if your diet is deficient in vitamin A, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, bioflavonoids or vitamin E, a heavier than normal menstruation could result.
  • Cataract patients also tend to be deficient in vitamin A and the carotenes, lutein and zeaxanthin.
  • Enhanced algae growth in the reservoir consumes the oxygen in the epilimnion and, as it decays, the mass sinks to the already oxygen-deficient hypolimnion, where decay processes reduce the oxygen concentration even further, resulting in acid conditions at lower levels and the dissolution of minerals from the reservoir bed. Chapter 8
  • While several councils have been fined for signing-off deficient work, in other cases councils have escaped responsibility because builders used independent certifiers.
  • To be a muddle-headed aesthete, even to be interested in the aesthetic qualities of literature at all, has long been anathema to a certain kind of critic, grounds for accusing writers of being morally deficient, but why, for example, would it probably not occur to these critics to declare, say, composers too interested in art, too attentive to the needs of form over those of morality? Narrative Strategies
  • Tax deficient California's treatment of multinational firms threatens to provoke a global tax war.
  • But, as children currently eat 50 per cent less fish than they did during the Second World War, it is thought that most youngsters are deficient in Omega 3.
  • They specifically admitted children who were behaviorally aggressive, not mentally deficient, brain damaged, or psychotic.
  • Exhaustively researched, The Sword and the Cross is somewhat deficient in maps and almost totally lacking in illustration.
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