Deficiency

n.

1.

The state of being deficient; inadequacy; want; failure; imperfection; shortcoming; defect. [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries. - Buckle. Deficiency of a curve (Geom.) the amount by which the number of double points on a curve is short of the maximum for curves of the same degree.

Noun	1.	deficiency - the state of needing something that is absent or unavailable; "there is a serious lack of insight into the problem"; "water is the critical deficiency in desert regions"; "for want of a nail the shoe was lost" Synonyms: lack, want
	2.	deficiency - lack of an adequate quantity or number; "the inadequacy of unemployment benefits" Synonyms: inadequacy, insufficiency

absence, adulteration, arrearage, arrestment, baseness, beggary, blemish, break, bug, callowness, catch, crack, dearth, defalcation, default, defect, defectibility, defection, defectiveness, deficit, demerit, deprivation, dereliction, destitution, discontinuity, drawback, drought, erroneousness, failing, failure, fallibility, famine, fault, faultiness, faute, fewness, flaw, foible, frailty, gap, hiatus, hole, immaturity, impairment, imperfection, impoverishment, impurity, inaccuracy, inadequacy, inadequateness, incompetence, incompleteness, incompletion, inexactitude, inexactness, infirmity, insufficiency, interval, kink, lack, lacuna, little problem, littleness, maladroitness, meanness, mediocrity, miscarriage, missing link, need, neglect, omission, outage, patchiness, pettiness, privation, problem, rift, scantiness, scrappiness, shabbiness, short measure, short weight, shortage, shortcoming, shortfall, sin, sketchiness, smallness, snag, something missing, starvation, subnormality, taint, triviality, ullage, underage, underdevelopment, undevelopment, unevenness, unperfectedness, unskillfulness, unsoundness, vulgarity, vulnerable place, want, wantage, weak link, weak point, weakness