lacking

Plurallackings

1. 1
   adjective

   Missing or not having enough of some good quality that should be present.

   Like a song without a chorus: you sense something essential isn't there.

   Critics found the novel technically polished yet lacking in genuine emotional depth.

   His argument was compelling but lacking in supporting evidence.

   Similardeficient, wanting

   Oppositerich, abundant

   Note

   Two constructions share this adjective. With in, it measures a shortfall in a quality: a cheese lacking in pungency, a team lacking in stamina. Standing alone after the verb, it simply means missing: a few pieces of the puzzle are lacking. It also grades like any adjective, giving more lacking and most lacking, so a reader can say one draft is more lacking in evidence than another.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of lack.

   Lacking sufficient evidence, the jury could not reach a verdict.

   The report is lacking the data needed to draw firm conclusions.

   Note

   The verb form takes its object directly: lacking evidence, lacking the data. That is the quickest way to tell it apart from the adjective, which needs in (lacking in stamina). Lack is a stative verb, so its participle sits naturally at the head of a reduced clause, as in Lacking a key, she waited outside. In its intransitive use it takes of or for instead, as in lacking for nothing.

3. 3
   noun

   The absence of something desirable, or something that ought to be present.

   Like a gap in a fence where a plank has gone missing.

   Reviewers noted a real lacking of original ideas in the sequel.

   A persistent lacking of funding stalled the research.

   Similarlack

   Oppositeabundance

   Note

   A noun that stands beside lack and can be counted, with the plural lackings. Sax Rohmer's The Romance of Sorcery (1914) plays the two words against each other: Cagliostro, "whatever his moral lackings, did not lack spirit." In the plural it names particular shortcomings, the failings of a character, rather than a single absence of something.

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