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scant

adj
/skænt/

Etymology

Adjective and determiner from Middle English scant, from Old Norse skamt, neuter of skammr (“short”), from Proto-Germanic *skammaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱem- (“mutilated, hornless”). Verb from Middle English scanten, from the adjective. Noun and adverb from Middle English scant, from the adjective.

  1. inherited from scanten
  2. derived from *(s)ḱem-✻ — “mutilated, hornless”
  3. derived from *skammaz✻ — “short”
  4. derived from skamt
  5. inherited from scant

Definitions

  1. Not full, large, or plentiful

    Not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; scanty; meager.

    • a scant allowance of provisions or water; a scant pattern of cloth for a garment
    • His sermon was scant, in all, a quarter of an hour.
    • Another major defect of the current literature dealing with the nomenclature of hybrid forms of English is the scant attention paid to the question of frequency.

  2. Sparing

    Sparing; parsimonious; chary.

    • Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

  3. Slightly diminished

    Slightly diminished; just short of the amount described.

    • a scant cup of sugar
  4. ›+ 9 more definitions

    1. To limit in amount or share

      To limit in amount or share; to stint.

      • to scant someone in provisions; to scant ourselves in the use of necessaries
      • Scant not my cups.
      • where man hath a great living laid together and where he is scanted

    2. To fail, or become less

      To fail, or become less; to scantle.

      • The wind scants.

    3. Very little, very few.

      • After his previous escapades, Mary had scant reason to believe John.
      • (as pronoun) The failure of this project has scant to do with me.
      • The summer I answered my first personals, I was a 19-year-old dyke living alone in a three-room bachelorette pad, scant blocks from Main Street, Waltham, Massachusetts.

    4. A small piece or quantity.

      • A blonde appeared from the officers' room, wearing a scant of material that passed for issued undergarments.

    5. Scarcity

      Scarcity; lack.

      • I was greatly surprised, however, in this very fertile and abundant country, to find so great a scant of provisions in the inns.

    6. A block of stone sawn on two sides down to the bed level.

    7. A sheet of stone.

    8. A slightly thinner measurement of a standard wood size.

    9. With difficulty

      With difficulty; scarcely; hardly.

      • So weak that he was scant able to go down the stairs.

The neighborhood

Derived

scantily, scantly, scantness, scanty, scants

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at scant. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01scant02scanty03niggardly04stingily05stingy

A definitional loop anchored at scant. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

5 hops · closes at scant

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA