scarce

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“
Never mind that if capital goods were no longer scarce, then neither would consumer goods be scarce (for, if they were, the means employed to produce them would have to be scarce too).

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Definitions (19)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. adjective Insufficient to meet a demand or requirement; short in supply: Fresh vegetables were scarce during the drought.
  2. adjective Hard to find; absent or rare: Steel pennies are scarce now except in coin shops.
  3. adverb Barely or hardly; scarcely.
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Examples (50)

  • Certainly it had to do with getting materials from where they were plentiful to where they were scarce, which is roughly the work of the traffic manager And so it goes. —  Opportunities in Engineering
  • In the end she had comforted herself with the thought that good cooks were exceedingly scarce--so scarce, in fact, that even a cook with impedimenta in the shape of a small son might be reasonably certain of prompt and well-paid employment. —  Kindred of the Dust
  • [25] Men came to be so scarce, that is men that were men enough to take their true place as leaders, that a woman had to step into the breach, and assume leadership. —  Quiet Talks on Service
  • The ring was set upon Betty's hand--scarce, it would seem, could he find her finger--the man took the woman to wife, the woman took the man for husband. —  Fair Margaret
  • The coin in circulation is gold and silver, but gold is scarce, which is an incovenience to people who have to carry a large amount of money about with them. —  The Hawaiian Archipelago
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

well ·  likely ·  wont ·  rare ·  abundant ·  reasonable ·  difficult ·  easy ·  valuable ·  slow ·  wise

Used in the same contextWord Family

scarce:   scarcer ·  scarcest
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English scars, from Old French scars, from Vulgar Latin *excarpsus, narrow, cramped, from past participle of *excarpere, to pluck out, alteration of Latin excerpere, to pick out; see excerpt.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. Early modern English also scarse; from Middle English scarce, skarce, scarse, scars = Middle Dutch schaers, sparing, niggard, Dutch schaars, schaarsch, scarce, rare, = Breton scarz, niggard, scanty, short, from Old French scars, usually escars, eschars, rarely eschar, eskar, eschard, sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor; of things, small, little, weak, few, scarce, light (of weight), strict, French échars, light (as winds), French dial. ecars, rare, echarre, sparing, = Provencal escars, escas = Old Spanish escasso, Spanish escaso = Portuguese escasso = Italian scarso, niggard, sparing, scanty, etc., light (of weight); Middle Latin scarsus, diminished, reduced; origin uncertain. According to Diez, Mahn, Skeat, and others, from Middle Latin scarpsus, excarpsus, for L. excerptus, past participle of excerpere, pick out, choose, select (see excerp and excerpt), the literally sense ‘picked out,’ ‘selected,’ leading, it is supposed, to the sense ‘rare,’ ‘scarce’ (Skeat), or to the sense ‘contracted,’ ‘shortened’ (Muratori, Mahn), whence ‘small,’ ‘scarce’; but Middle Latin scarpsus, excarpsus, is not found in any sense of scarce, and this view ignores the early personal use, ‘sparing,’ ‘parsimonious,’ which can hardly be connected with Middle Latin scarpsus except by assuming that scarpsus was used in an active sense, ‘picking out,’ ‘selecting,’ and so ‘reserving,’ ‘sparing.’ The physical use in Middle Dutch schaers afscheren, shear off close, shave close, Italian cogliere scarso, strike close, graze (see scarce, adv.), scarsare, cut off, pinch, scant (see scarce, v.), suggests some confusion with Middle Dutch schaers, a pair of shears, also a plowshare, and the orig. verb scheeren, shear (see shear, shears, share). The personal sense, ‘sparing,’ ‘niggard,’ is apparently the earliest in English and Old French
  2. = Middle Dutch schaers, schaars, scarce, close (cf. schaers afscheren, shear or shave close; cf. Italian cogliere scarso, strike close, graze; properly the adjective); from scarce, adjective
  3. from Middle English scarsen (= Italian scarsare); from scarce, adjective
 

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