Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Insufficient to meet a demand or requirement; short in supply: Fresh vegetables were scarce during the drought.
- adj. Hard to find; absent or rare: Steel pennies are scarce now except in coin shops.
- adv. Barely or hardly; scarcely.
- idiom. make (oneself) scarce Informal To stay away; be absent or elusive.
- idiom. make (oneself) scarce Informal To depart, especially quickly or furtively; abscond.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Sparing; parsimonious; niggard; niggardly; stingy.
- Scantily supplied; poorly provided; not having much: sometimes with of.
- Diminished; reduced from the original or the proper size or measure; deficient; short.
- Deficient in quantity or number; insufficient for the need or demand; scant; scanty; not abundant.
- Few in number; seldom seen; infrequent; uncommon; rare: as, scarce coins; a scarce book.
- Characterized by scarcity, especially of provisions, or the necessaries of life.
- Synonyms and Rare, Scarce. See rare.
- Hardly; barely; scarcely.
- To make less; diminish; make scant.
Wiktionary
- adj. Insufficient to meet a demand or requirement.
- adj. Difficult to find, due to scarcity.
- adv. Scarcely, only just.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon.
- adj. Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); -- with
of . - adj. Sparing; frugal; parsimonious; stingy.
- adv. With difficulty; hardly; scantly; barely; but just.
- adv. Frugally; penuriously.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand
- adv. only a very short time before
Etymologies
- 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.
Examples
“Thus, _If cats are scarce, mice are plentiful_, contains two verbal clauses; but _if cats are scarce_ is conditional, not indicative; and _mice are plentiful_ is subject to the condition that _cats are scarce_.”
“A quarter century had passed since Douglas had hired the Court's first female clerk; that was during World War II, when male law students were in scarce supply.”
“Still, economists expect jobs likely will remain scarce even as the economy improves.”
Department of Labor: unemployment rate 10.2%. - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState
“Unfortunately, deals are in scarce supply from wineries directly.”
Napa Valley struggles to escape “time warp”! | Dr Vino's wine blog
“I think it will turn into another argument over how scarce is the ammo?”
“Environmental destruction will increase social problems as communities and individuals fight with one another to obtain scarce resources such as water.”
David Livingstone’s Vision Revisited: Christianity, Commerce and Civilization in the 21st Century
“Of course, this hoarding is one of the reasons certain scarce items disappear but better they disappear in my pantry than someone elses.”
“The breadth and depth of the skills problem is illustrated by the fact that for two thirds of the firms surveyed, the skills they define as scarce comprise well over 50 percent of their current staff.”
“I call scarce express in words how much benefit may be had by cold baths; for they who use them, although almost spent with old age, have”
“He assured the prisoner with a glance of the eye, with a word scarce above a whisper, as he slowly rose to make his speech for the defence.”
Lists
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Kristianto2010 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be SCARCE and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. Deuteronomy 8:7~9. Mar 8, 2011
reesetee In the rare book field, a scarce publication traditionally isn't as hard to find as a rare publication, but it might take a few years to locate. Feb 24, 2008