scanty

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: scant=y

CIDE DICTIONARY

scanty, a. [From Scant, a.].

•  Wanting amplitude or extent; narrow; small; not abundant.  [1913 Webster]

  "His dominions were very narrow and scanty."  [1913 Webster]

  "Now scantier limits the proud arch confine."  [1913 Webster]
•  Somewhat less than is needed; insufficient; scant; as, a scanty supply of words; a scanty supply of bread.  [1913 Webster]
•  Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious.  [1913 Webster]

  "In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words."  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Scant; narrow; small; poor; deficient; meager; scarce; chary; sparing; parsimonious; penurious; niggardly; grudging.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

scanty, adj. (scantier, scantiest)
1 of small extent or amount.
2 barely sufficient.

Derivative

scantily adv. scantiness n.

Etymology

obs. scant scanty supply f. ON skamt neut. adj.: see SCANT

THESAURUS

scanty

Lenten, Spartan, abstemious, angustifoliate, angustirostrate, angustisellate, angustiseptal, arrested, ascetic, at a premium, austere, barely sufficient, callow, cheeseparing, chinchy, chintzy, circumscribed, close, close-fitting, confined, constricted, cramp, cramped, crowded, defective, deficient, dwarfed, dwarfish, embryonic, exiguous, failing, frugal, hypoplastic, immature, impoverished, in arrear, in arrears, in default, in short supply, inadequate, incapacious, incommodious, incomplete, infant, infrequent, insufficient, isthmian, isthmic, jejune, lacking, lean, limited, little, meager, mean, measly, minimal, miserly, missing, narrow, near, needing, niggardly, out of print, out of season, out of stock, paltry, parsimonious, part, partial, patchy, piddling, poor, puny, rare, restricted, scant, scarce, scattered, scrappy, scrawny, scrimp, scrimping, scrimpy, seldom met with, seldom seen, short, shy, sketchy, skimp, skimping, skimpy, slender, slight, slim, small, spare, sparing, sparse, spotty, sprinkled, starvation, stingy, stinted, strait, straitened, stunted, subsistence, thin, tight, uncommon, underdeveloped, undeveloped, unnourishing, unnutritious, wanting, watered, watery

ROGET THESAURUS

scanty

Smallness

N smallness, littleness, tenuity, paucity, fewness, meanness, insignificance (unimportance), mediocrity, moderation, small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum, vanishing point, material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace, minutiae, details, look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight, whit, tittle, shade, shadow, spark, scintilla, gleam, touch, cast, grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau, screed, smack, tinge, tincture, inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet, flitter, gobbet, mite, bit, morsel, crumb, seed, fritter, shive, snip, snippet, snick, snack, snatch, slip, scrag, chip, chipping, shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair, nutshell, thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful, fragment, fraction, drop in the ocean, animalcule, trifle, mere nothing, next to nothing, hardly anything, just enough to swear by, the shadow of a shade, finiteness, finite quantity, small, little, diminutive, minute, fine, inconsiderable, paltry, faint, slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited, meager, sparing, few, low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes, below par, under par, below the mark, at a low ebb, halfway, moderate, modest, tender, subtle, inappreciable, evanescent, infinitesimal, homeopathic, very small, atomic, corpuscular, microscopic, molecular, subatomic, mere, simple, sheer, stark, bare, near run, dull, petty, shallow, stolid, ungifted, unintelligent, to a small extent, on a small scale, a little bit, a wee bit, slightly, imperceptibly, miserably, wretchedly, insufficiently, imperfectly, faintly, passably, pretty well, well enough, partially, in part, in a certain degree, to a certain degree, to a certain extent, comparatively, some, rather in some degree, in some measure, something, somewhat, simply, only, purely, merely, at least, at the least, at most, at the most, ever so little, as little as may be, tant soit peu, in ever so small a degree, thus far, pro tanto, within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak, almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but, near upon, close upon, peu s'en faut, near the mark, within an ace of, within an inch of, on the brink of, scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than, about, thereabouts, somewhere about, nearly, say, be the same, be little more or less, no ways, no way, no wise, not at all, not in the least, not a bit, not a bit of it, not a whit, not a jot, not a shadow, in no wise, in no respect, by no means, by no manner of means, on no account, at no hand, dare pondus idonea fumo, magno conatu magnas nugas, small sands the mountain, moments make the year.

Fewness

N fewness, paucity, small number, small quantity, rarity, infrequency, handful, maniple, minority, exiguity, reduction, weeding, elimination, sarculation, decimation, eradication, few, scant, scanty, thin, rare, scattered, thinly scattered, spotty, few and far between, exiguous, infrequent, rari nantes, hardly any, scarcely any, to be counted on one's fingers, reduced, unrepeated, rarely, here and there.

Thinness

N narrowness, thinness, narrowness, closeness, exility, exiguity, line, hair's breadth, finger's breadth, strip, streak, vein, monolayer, epitaxial deposition, thinness, tenuity, emaciation, macilency, marcor, shaving, slip, thread paper, skeleton, shadow, anatomy, spindleshanks, lantern jaws, mere skin and bone, middle constriction, stricture, neck, waist, isthmus, wasp, hourglass, ridge, ghaut, ghat, pass, ravine, narrowing, coarctation, angustation, tapering, contraction, narrow, close, slender, thin, fine, thread-like, finespun, gossamer, paper-thin, taper, slim, slight-made, scant, scanty, spare, delicate, incapacious, contracted, unexpanded &c (expand), slender as a thread, emaciated, lean, meager, gaunt, macilent, lank, lanky, weedy, skinny, scrawny slinky, starved, starveling, herring gutted, worn to a shadow, lean as a rake, thin as a lath, thin as a whipping post, thin as a wafer, hatchet-faced, lantern-jawed, attenuated, shriveled, extenuated, tabid, marcid, barebone, rawboned, monomolecular.