noun

• (uncountable) Extreme shortage of food in a region.
  "It was reserved for Christians to torture bread, the staff of life, bread for which children in whole districts wail, bread, the gift of pasture to the poor, bread, for want of which thousands of our fellow beings annually perish by famine; it was reserved for Christians to torture the material of bread by fire, to create a chemical and maddening poison, burning up the brain and brutalizing the soul, and producing evils to humanity, in comparison of which, war, pestilence, and famine, cease to be evils."
• (countable) A period of extreme shortage of food in a region.
  "1986, United States Congress, House Select Committee on Hunger, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Famine and Recovery in Africa The root causes of the current famine are known: poverty, low health standards...."
• (dated) Starvation or malnutrition.
  "His own flesh, however, which he lost by famine, shall be restored to him by Him who can recover even what has evaporated."

name

• (mythology) The personification of famine, often depicted riding a black horse.