Scarce

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈskɛəs/

Definitions

1. Insufficient in quantity or available in limited amounts, making something difficult or impossible to obtain
2. Limited in supply or notably lacking, which results in challenges to acquire or use effectively
3. Present in small numbers or amounts, causing a notable deficiency that hinders accessibility or availability

Etymology: The adjective "scarce" arrived in Middle English from Old Northern French "escars" and "scars", meaning "sparing, niggardly, parsimonious, miserly, poor." Its original sense was about meagre supply and stinginess rather than rarity, so a scarce thing was once one that was held back or doled out grudgingly. The French forms in turn go back to Medieval Latin "scarsus," meaning "diminished" or "reduced," but the route from that sense to "hard to find" is difficult to trace. Where the word came from is unsettled. One theory links it to a Late Latin reconstructed form, "excarpsus," a participle of "excarpere" ("take out"), built from "ex-" and "carpere." Middle Dutch has similar words, "schaers" meaning "scarce" and also "a pair of shears," which hints at a connection to the idea of cutting or shearing, though this relationship is not firmly established. The pronunciation is odd. The spelling suggests a vowel like the one in "car," but the standard pronunciation has the vowel of "scare." Early Modern English speakers often pronounced the word with the "car" vowel, and this older sound survives in some traditional dialects. The modern standard form is a survivor of a Middle English pattern that left only a few words, including "dace," with the same shift.

Synonyms: rare, limited, insufficient, infrequent, sparse

Antonyms: abundant, plentiful, ample, plentiful