Literary notes about Deficient (AI summary)
In literature, "deficient" is frequently employed to denote an absence or insufficiency of a quality vital to a person, object, or idea. Authors use it to express everything from the limitations of human faculties—as when Shakespeare warns of the mind’s potential to falter [1]—to a critique of social or natural shortcomings, as noted in discussions of inadequate resources or attributes in political or scientific context [2], [3]. It can serve both as self-deprecation, with characters lamenting their own intellectual or moral failings [4], and as an external judgment on the shortcomings of institutions or creations, even extending to the aesthetic realm where a lack of "life" is pointed out [5]. This multifaceted usage reveals how the term not only diagnoses limitations but also deepens character portrayal and thematic complexity.
- I’ll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.
— from The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare - On this account it is not at all probable, that the ocean should be deficient in a region where moisture so much abounds.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny - In short, though of strategic value from its strength and position, the port was deficient in resources.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. Mahan - " "How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect was probably deficient.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot - This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call "life."
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville
