Absent, deficient

Usage examples of lacking.

The grand houses and hospitality were such as Adams had never known, even if, as a self-respecting New Englander, he thought New Yorkers lacking in decorum.

As for Captain Tucker, Adams considered him able and attentive, though, to judge by the few books in his cabin, no doubt lacking in erudition.

I shall exercise my skill in dentistry for trifling rewards, and you, my young Aesculapius, will prove to others, as you have already proved to me, that the strong wrist and willing arm are not lacking among your personal endowments.

Mary waited in the middle of the track, her nerves ajingle with the suddenness of the approach, and presently the horse appeared out of the mist in front of her, a rider on his back, the pair of ghostly figures lacking reality in the dim light.

Wherever the Mafia had grown and prospered since Prohibition, these other savages were there as well, ever clinging to the shadows as the more flamboyant amici filled headlines and mortuaries, lending their advice and financial acumen where it was lacking in their Mafia comrades, Siegel, Buchalter, Cohen, Lansky.

Lacking the same antinoise features herself, she had to agree to be snap-frozen to a few Kelvin, three minutes before each run.

I believe Arabella to be a well-behaved girl enough, but she is very young, after all, and I have thought sometimes that her spirits might, lacking wiser guidance, betray her into unbecoming conduct.

The Llano complex, in turn, is lumped into a large group of archeological remains that also includes younger artifact assemblages characterized by projectile points similar in form but lacking the diagnostic flutes.

Jones has suggested that it is heat that is lacking and has advanced the idea that even though the trees are hardy to winter cold they have not sufficient summer heat at Aspers to enable them to mature their crops.

Lacking a traditional organized crime network, it had become the battleground of a drug war among competing groups: Jamaicans, Haitians, New York elements, and home-grown Washingtonians competing for the lucrative trade to service the insatiable demand of the Beltway professionals.

As with jumbo conversation hearts, the larger size gave the candies a tenderness that was lacking in the taut, small version.

A lot of fine, churchgoing people had made judgments and found him lacking just because of what his mother had done for a living.

William, prince of Orange, lacking the brilliant qualities of Egmont, far surpassed him in acumen and in strength of character.

Being is insufficient, if happiness demands fulness of life, and exists, therefore, where nothing is lacking of all that belongs to the idea of life, then happiness can exist only in a being that lives fully.

The naive frankness of the age, both when it gloried in the flesh and when it reproved sin, gives a full-blooded complexion to that time that is lacking now.