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scarce

adj
/ˈskɛəs/UK/ˈskɛɚs/US/skeːs/

Etymology

From Middle English scars, scarse, from Old Northern French scars, escars ("sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor"; > French échars, Medieval Latin scarsus (“diminished, reduced”)), of uncertain origin. One theory is that it derives originally from a Late Latin *scarpsus, *excarpsus, a participle form of *excarpere (“take out”), from Latin ex- + carpere; yet the sense evolution is difficult to trace. Compare Middle Dutch schaers (“scarce”), Middle Dutch schaers (“a pair of shears, plowshare”), scheeren (“to shear”). The standard pronunciation having the /ɛə(ɹ)/ vowel instead of expected /ɑː(ɹ)/ is due to a tendency for Old and Middle French preconsonantal /ar/ to be borrowed as Middle English /aːr/ that only survives in this word and dace in the modern standard, but is more frequent in Early Modern English and traditional dialects; compare Scots gairden (“garden”), lairge (“large”).

  1. derived from ex-
  2. derived from *scarpsus✻
  3. derived from scars
  4. inherited from scars

Definitions

  1. Uncommon, rare

    Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.

    • By the end of the 20th century elephants had become scarce even in Africa.
    • You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen in value one fifth.

  2. Scantily supplied (with)

    Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of.

    • The project failed due to the scarce resources in the national market.
    • a region scarce of prey

  3. Scarcely, only just.

    • The Virgin quite for her requeſt / The God that ſits at marriage feaſt; / He at their invoking came / But with a ſcarce-wel-lighted flame; / And in his Garland as he ſtood, / Ye might diſcern a Cipreſs bud.
    • And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, / That I scarce was sure I heard you […]
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A surname.

The neighborhood

Derived

make oneself scarce, nonscarce, scarce as hen's teeth, scarce chaser, scarce copper, scarcely, scarcement, scarcen, scarceness, unscarce

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at scarce. 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.

01scarce02rare03uncommon04exceptionally05exceptional06rarity07scarcity

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

7 hops · closes at scarce

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