beggary, dearth, destitution, difficulty, distress, embarrassment, exigency, hand-to-mouth existence, hardship, impecuniousness, impoverishment, inadequacy, indigence, insolvency, insufficiency, juncture, lack, mendicancy, necessity, need, neediness, pass, paucity, pauperism, pennilessness, penury, pinch, poorness, privation, rareness, rarity, scant, scant sufficiency, scantiness, scarceness, scarcity, shortage, sparseness, sparsity, strait, suffering, uncommonness, unprosperousness, want