scarce
/ˈskɛɚs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.61 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price."
- "The project failed due to the scarce resources in the national market."
- "a region scarce of prey"
- "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."
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”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈskɛɚs/
- British English: /ˈskɛəs/
Usage
Inflected Forms
scarcer (comparative)
scarcest (superlative)
scarse (alternative, obsolete)
scace (alternative)
Scarces (plural)