dearth  

/dərTH/

Noun
A scarcity or lack of something: “there is a dearth of evidence”.
Synonyms

scarcity – shortage – lack – want – deficiency – famine

Last night I was writing some Facebook posts about my favorite football team, Chelsea. I was looking to use the word “dearth”. I knew it in my head, but not how to spell it. I tried dirth, derth, etc… I eventually gave up and used a synonym. It is easy enough to find on the internet, but for quick FB posting, who cares, this is not an English paper.

This morning, I am using my favorite feature the Google Reader Next bookmarklet.  This feature allows you to run through your Google Reader subscriptions at random (based on most recently added). This means of all the posts and all the subscriptions I have this is the story that came up: Snapchatting while Rome burns. And there it is. 3rd to last paragraph, dearth. How many people are using this word and more importantly, what are the odds of me reading that word within 20 hours of trying to use it?

TTC* 20 hours

* time to coincidence