scarce
/skɛːs
/adjective
1(Especially of food, money, or some other resource) insufficient for the demand: as raw materials became scarce, synthetics were developed...
- This was compounded by a growing competition for scarce food resources.
- They saw their families and communities through difficult times, when money was scarce and the demands of rural life were very demanding.
- This may be so fundamental to the business that diverting scarce resources and money into longer-term plans would be wrong.
Synonyms
in short supply, short, scant, scanty, meagre, sparse, hard to find, hard to come by, not enough, too little, insufficient, deficient, inadequate, lacking, wanting;
at a premium, like gold dust, not to be had, scarcer than hen's teeth;
paltry, negligible, thin
informal not to be had for love nor money
rare exiguous
1.1Occurring in small numbers or quantities; rare: the freshwater shrimp becomes scarce in soft water...
- Tatum rabbet planes are scarce to rare and this was a nice example.
- They were the secret of that period of time. They are still fairly rare, fairly scarce.
- In some ways it can be considered as a miniature flora of an area, highlighting the locally rare and scarce species.
Synonyms
rare, few and far between, thin on the ground, seldom seen/found;
uncommon, unusual, infrequent;
British out of the common
adverb archaic
Scarcely: a babe scarce two years old...
- In recent years, the beleaguered couple have been scarce on the social scene.
- I went to the bucket but there was scarce any left.
- At that moment the beast-man charged the Kshatriya; Viro scarce had time to roll.
Phrases
make oneself scarce
Derivatives
scarceness
- This last component supposedly arose in response to the scarceness of Arabic speakers in America's armed forces and intelligence organizations.
- The eiresione and the first-fruit sacrifice are typical signs of seasonal renewal: the first signs of coming prosperity after the scarceness of the winter period.
- Munificence relates to the scarceness of environment resources that support firm growth in a given industry.
Origin
Middle English (in the sense 'restricted in quantity or size', also 'parsimonious'): from a shortening of Anglo-Norman escars, from a Romance word meaning 'plucked out, selected'.