scarce
Meanings
Adjective
- deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand
- "fresh vegetables were scarce during the drought"
Adverb
- only a very short time before; ; ; ; ; - W.B.Yeats
- "had scarcely rung the bell when the door flew open"
- "would have scarce arrived before she would have found some excuse to leave"
Adj
- Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
- Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of.
Adv
- Scarcely, only just.
Origin / 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”).
Antonyms
Scrabble Score: 10
scarce is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordscarce is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
scarce is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary