deficit

Noun

• an excess of liabilities over assets (usually over a certain period)
  • last year there was a serious budgetary deficit
    

• (sports) the score by which a team or individual is losing

• a deficiency or failure in neurological or mental functioning
  • the people concerned have a deficit in verbal memory
    
  • they have serious linguistic deficits
    

• the property of being an amount by which something is less than expected or required
  • new blood vessels bud out from the already dilated vascular bed to make up the nutritional deficit
    

Related words

• Synonyms: 
  shortage , shortfall