SCANTY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Scanty

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/skˈænti/ Listen

adjective

Scanty adj. (compar. scantier; superl. scantiest)

Lacking amplitude or extent; narrow; small; not abundant. "His dominions were very narrow and scanty." "Now scantier limits the proud arch confine."

Somewhat less than is needed; insufficient; scant; as, a scanty supply of words; a scanty supply of bread.

Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious. "In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words."

Synonyms: Scant; narrow; small; poor; deficient; meager; scarce; chary; sparing; parsimonious; penurious; niggardly; grudging.

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Etymology of 'Scanty'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books

... twenty-seventh of November when Mr. Shrimplin killed Murphy of the solitary eye, and he reached the climax of the story just as Mrs. Shrimplin began to prepare the dressing for the small turkey that was to be the principal feature of their four-o'clock dinner. The morning's scanty fall of snow had been so added to as time passed that now it completely whitened the strip of brown turf in the little side yard ...

— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... fire in her chair, straight and stiff, making no sound. Now and then her eyelids shook, fluttered red rims; slow, scanty tears oozed and fell, their trail glistening in the long furrows ...

— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... tables and benches, and here the peasants sit smoking their long pipes and emptying their big mugs or glasses, and as a rule hardly speaking. They do not get drunk, but no doubt they spend more than they can afford out of their scanty earnings. ...

— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... the precautionary lies of nature, to keep us going, that, the instant we are tinkered in any part, we ignore its merely being fitted up for shortened use. Hope eternal tells us how much stronger it is than it was before. If you rub unguent into your scanty hair you can feel it grow, as a poet hears the grass. A nostrum on your toil-hardened hands brings back, to keen anticipation, the skin of youth. All mankind is prepared to a perfect degree of sensitiveness for response to the quack ...

— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as "The Dead Man's Chest." The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance to the old sailors' sea chest which held his scanty belongings. The song or chantey was familiar to deep-sea sailors many years ago. The song is copied from a very old scrapbook, in which the author's name was not given. ...

— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

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