The presence of something in only small or insufficient quantities or amounts:a paucity of information...
Will the present paucity of lackadaisical dreamers affect our future cultural heritage?
There is at present a paucity of evaluations of disease management programmes.
The paucity of these qualities in the present Republic would stagger them.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French paucite or Latin paucitas, from paucus 'few'.
few from Old English:
The ancient root of few is shared by Latin paucus ‘small’, which gives us the English word paucity (Late Middle English). The name the Few for the RAF pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain in 1940 comes from a speech by Winston Churchill in August of that year: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’