scanty

English

Etymology

scant +‎ -y

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈskænti/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ænti

Adjective

scanty (comparative scantier, superlative scantiest)

1. Somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.

   Synonym: skimpy

   A girl dressed in scanty clothing

   • 1810, Walter Scott, “Canto VI. The Guard-room.”, in The Lady of the Lake; , Edinburgh: [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, →OCLC, stanza III:

     To share, with ill-concealed disdain, / Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain.

   • 1837, Edward Lytton Bulwer [i.e., Edward Bulwer-Lytton], Athens: Its Rise and Fall: , volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Saunders and Otley, , →OCLC:

     […] and we cannot but regret that the imperfect morality of those days, which saw glory in the valour of freemen, rebellion only in that of slaves, should have left us but frigid and scanty accounts of so obstinate a siege.

   • 1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 5, in Our Mutual Friend. , volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, , published 1865, →OCLC:

     Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.

   • 1914 June, James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC:

     His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur.

   • 1921, Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch‎, volume 1:

     How scanty are the records of great men in India!

   • 1979, Bryan Jonson, Amerigine:

     Traditions older than paleoarctic, as scanty as the evidence may be, show clearly that colonization of Alberta and even as far north as southern Alaska came from the south.

2. Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious; stingy.
   • 1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, , 2nd edition, London: John Clark and Richard Hett, , Emanuel Matthews, , and Richard Ford, , published 1726, →OCLC:

     In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words.

Derived terms

• scantily
• scantiness

Translations

See also

• meagre
• scant
• slender
• insufficient
• deficient
• scarce
• exiguous

Further reading

• “scanty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “scanty”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “scanty”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• Cantys