What does “দুর্ভিক্ষ” mean in Bengali?

দুর্ভিক্ষ is famine, and its parts are bleaker than the English word. It joins দুর্- (“bad, hard”) to ভিক্ষা (“alms”) — a time when even begging brings nothing back. That prefix is everywhere in Bengali: দুর্ঘটনা (accident), দুর্বল (weak), দুর্নীতি (corruption). Learn দুর্- and a whole shelf of heavy words opens at once.

The word carries specific weight in Bengali. মন্বন্তর is the term reserved for the great famines, above all the Bengal famine of 1943; the 1877 El Niño famine this clip revisits killed millions across India. The Sanskrit source durbhikṣa is assembled the same way, from dus- (“bad”) and bhikṣā (“alms, subsistence”).