Link Centre Dictionary

scarce

UK/ˈskɛəs/ US/ˈskɛɚs/ fairly common literary
adverb (1) adjective (2)

adverb

1.

by a small margin

  • “they could barely hear the speaker”
  • “we hardly knew them”
  • “just missed being hit”
  • “had scarcely rung the bell when the door flew open”
  • “would have scarce arrived before she would have found some excuse to leave” W.B.Yeats
Synonyms

adjective

1.

not enough; hard to find

  • “meat was scarce during the war”
Similar
2.

deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand

  • “fresh vegetables were scarce during the drought”
Antonyms
Similar

Origin

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”).

Phrases

  • make oneself scarce
  • scarce as hen's teeth
  • scarce chaser
  • scarce copper

Related words

Word family

See also

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.