Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Scant   Listen
verb
Scant  v. t.  (past & past part. scanted; pres. part. scanting)  
1.
To limit; to straiten; to treat illiberally; to stint; as, to scant one in provisions; to scant ourselves in the use of necessaries. "Where a man hath a great living laid together and where he is scanted." "I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on your actions."
2.
To cut short; to make small, narrow, or scanty; to curtail. "Scant not my cups."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Scant" Quotes from Famous Books



... off Thirty-Fourth Street. The launch was ready almost as the chain rattled. Blake's big French car was waiting for him at the pier; and, with scant regard for the speed ordinances, it bore him swiftly through the traffic-thronged streets to lower Fifth Avenue, and to the ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... which confronts the solar physicist engaged in the interpretation of the hieroglyphic lines of sun-spot spectra. The colossal whirling storms that constitute sun-spots, so vast that the earth would make but a moment's scant mouthful for them, differ materially from the general light of the sun when examined with the spectroscope. Observing them visually many years ago, the late Professor Young, of Princeton, found among their complex features a number of double lines which he naturally ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... himself, but made him indignant with the Reverend Alexander, as he generally called Alick when he spoke of him wishing to suggest disrespect. He held him as a poacher beating up his preserves; and the gentlemen of England have scant mercy for poachers, conscious or unconscious. Meanwhile, nothing could be more delightfully smooth and successful than the whole thing was on the outside. The women looked nice, the men were gallant, the mature but comely bride was so happy that she seemed to radiate happiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... late in the day, took the field to man the defenses when Sherman was marching to the sea. They were frequently made up of old men and boys who had been exempt from the regular service, and these were hurried into action with poor equipment and scant preparation. General Toombs, in a letter written to his wife, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... all kinds were showered upon him. Many medals were awarded to him, and the grateful miners subscribed from their scant wages enough to present him with a magnificent service of silver worth $12,000. His discovery was hailed from every part of Europe. The Czar Alexander of Russia sent him a beautiful vase, and he was chosen a member of the historic Institute of France; while his own government ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... stronger preyed upon the weaker, and even the sick who were unable to defend themselves were robbed of their scanty supplies of food and clothing. Dark stories were afloat, of men, both sick and well, who were murdered at night, strangled to death by their comrades for scant supplies of clothing or money. I heard a sick and wounded Federal prisoner accuse his nurse, a fellow-prisoner of the United States Army, of having stealthily, during his sleep inoculated his wounded arm with gangrene, that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... themselves. There wasn't a sound of any sort—least of all of music. Some of them still carried their harps; but most of them had stacked them in open spaces the way soldiers stack their rifles. When the robin sank spent to the grass in front of them, they paid him scant attention. When he weakly chirped his question, "Where's God?" they jerked their thumbs, indicating the direction, too listless to waste breath ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson

... than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in Grant Sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad of their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead grumbled; Tommy had occasional moments of revolt and increased the ordinary by a few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for the moment, and there was underneath a real and general acquiescence ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... tight that the buttonholes were burst out, and it showed white on the shoulders,—while the skirt was so scant that she could not ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this she had always the social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her pastimes as easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained there, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... the authorities are looking for a law that will deport me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... finding Indian arrowheads and hatchets and pestles. He picks full pails of the nicest-looking huckleberries. He is always dressed in clean, tidy clothes, a little scant and well patched. He pats me on the head and says, "Didn't know you were Evelyn's sister; thought it was a little three-year old." About to tell me a sad story he had read in the newspaper, he stops suddenly and says, "Believe I won't tell you, dear!" "Did you hear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... seems to have treated his mother with scant courtesy in public but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, has apologized ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... worried that he gave scant attention to the letters received from Phil Lawrence and Shadow Hamilton, even though those communications contained many matters of interest. He was looking at the Dickley communication for a third time when ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... back to the stage barn. "Certainly looks blue for Henry," muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. "Bob Scott," he added gloomily, "may find him somewhere ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and that from each of his visits ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... hostelrie, and died the same day. My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof; and condemned me to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three, I could bear no more! So having sold him my scant share in the heritage, and turned, like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a party of horse in their journey to London, and arrived yesterday at Master Sackbut's hostelrie in Eastchepe. I went this morning to my Lord of Warwick; ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... my former purpose to fulfil, ' ' And sing the dungeon's praise with honour due- For this angelic tongues were scant of skill. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... tomato, three pints of milk, a large table-spoonful of flour, butter the size of an egg, pepper and salt to taste, a scant teaspoonful of soda. Put the tomato on to stew, and the milk in a double kettle to boil, reserving however, half a cupful to mix with flour. Mix the flour smoothly with this cold milk, stir into the boiling milk, ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... extensive establishments formed by the Roman Catholic clergy a hundred years ago. There were over a score, San Diego being the oldest. Each mission had its priests, a few Spanish or Mexican soldiers, and scores, hundreds and sometimes thousands of Indian converts who received a scant support and ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... one located in the central part of the State of Pennsylvania. It was perhaps a mile wide and more than that long, and surrounded by mountains and long ranges of hills. At the lower end of the lake was a small settlement of scant importance and at the upper end, where there was a stream of no mean size, was the town of Riverside. At Riverside were situated several summer hotels and boarding houses, and also the elegant mansion in which Ned Talmadge resided, with his parents ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... am relieved for a few minutes that I may have my coffee. Being the last man, I get a bo'sun's share of the grounds. To my protests the cook gives scant heed. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... the battle's brunt At Queenstown, and at Lundy's Lane: On whose scant ranks but iron front ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... raiment had been donned some distance behind the tool house and unknown to the watchful George. All this had not surprised Gus, but he had been puzzled by the appearance on the hillside of another figure that kept behind the scant bushes much as Gus was doing, except that it was screened against being seen from below and evidently did not know of Gus's presence. Now, however, all attention was given to the altercation before the tool house, around which the ghost had come, evidently to be disappointed at not ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business. But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline and was not ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... book is rank melodrama. It has scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only mission is to entertain you and,—if you belong to the action-loving majority, to give ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... experience, which, in spite of his soft hat, had left certain marks upon his scalp, had he ever attempted to catch her. Instead, he had borrowed a gun, and a dozen times had fired at her; but although he counted himself a fair shot, he had never made even a scant bit of fur ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... not the district that makes the wine, and our Bohemians accepted as the authentic growth of Ai the liquor that was served out to them in the appropriate glasses, and despite the scant degree of vivacity shown by the cork in popping from its prison, went into ecstacies over the excellence of the vintage on seeing the quality of the froth. Schaunard summoned up all his remaining self-possession to make a mistake as regards glasses, and help himself to that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of the Place of Death made a winding line across the scant half mile of valley where the green fields ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... chosen her seat where she could best look out from the scant amount of window. She gazed at the harvest-fields full of sheaves, the orchards laden with ruddy apples, the trees assuming their autumn tints, with lingering eyes, as of one who foreboded that these sights of earth were ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... questions and answers, which may be compared in spirit, though not in actual content, with the questions and answers to be found in Zabara. Marcolf succeeds in thoroughly tiring out the king, and though the courtiers are for driving Marcolf off with scant courtesy, the king interposes, fulfils his promise, and dismisses his adversary with gifts. Marcolf leaves the court, according to one version, with the noble remark, Ubi non est ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... they happened before most of the Newcomes now extant were born, and surely therefore are out of the province of this contemporary biography. Lady Kew was indignant with her daughter (there were some moments when any conduct of her friends did not meet her ladyship's approbation) even for the scant civility with which Lady Anne had received the Duchess's advances. "Leave a card upon her!—yes, send a card by one of your footmen; but go in to see her—because she was at the window and saw you drive up.—Are you mad, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had told his friend how he felt, but not what had happened. Ansell could discuss love and death admirably, but somehow he would not understand lovers or a dying man, and in the letter there had been scant allusion to these concrete facts. Would Cambridge understand them either? He watched some dons who were peeping into an excavation, and throwing up their hands with humorous gestures of despair. These men would lecture next week ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... hauntest Homole's fair champaign, Bring the soft charmer, whosoe'er it be, Unbid to his sweet arms—so, gracious Pan, May ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed With squills by young Arcadians, whensoe'er They are scant of supper! But should this my prayer Mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, Dinted and sore all over from their claws! Then mayest thou lodge amid Edonian hills By Hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... as if it were only yesterday. We were at our scant breakfast, I as blue as was ever even twenty-five, she brave and confident. And hers was no mere pretense to reassure me, no cheerless optimism of ignorance, but the through-and-through courage and strength of those who flinch for no bogey that life or death can conjure. Her tone lifted me; ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... a matter of judgment as to how long it is best to hold plants, which are in condition for setting, for favorable weather conditions. They can sometimes be held a few days, by scant watering and full exposure, or in some cases by taking from the bed and heeling in, as nurserymen do trees; but it is better to set when the weather is unfavorable or to run some risk from frost rather than to hold them in this way too long. The wise selection of time for setting ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... that will hold the place of honor on the nursery bookshelf until it falls to pieces from such handling is "Little Miss Weezy's Sister," a simple, yet absorbing story of children who are interesting because they are so real. It is doing scant justice to say for the author, Penn Shirley, that the annals of child-life have seldom been traced with more ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... now in a sort of narrow gorge, or gully, with rocky walls on either side, and only scant vegetation on the bottom, where some bunch grass grew. The water seemed to ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... an exalted life; to this Convent of St. Agnes she was peculiarly attached. At the same time, she was well aware, as other letters beside the present show, that even the best of cloisters afforded at this time scant shelter to young girls from emotional temptation, gross or fine. Her warnings to her niece have the authoritative tone of anxiety. Let us hope that Eugenia took them to heart; and that, leading the disciplined life of Catherine's desire, she became not unworthy to receive and apprehend ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... that Mr. Carville displayed no shadow either of reverence or dislike for a place which impressed itself upon me more even than San Francisco or Chicago. It seemed to me strange that a man so sensitive to detail, so conscious of the scant poetry of the commonplace, should have no feeling for that astonishing accident which we call New York City. That he was not aware of her I refused absolutely to credit. If he could feel the beauty of Genoa and the immensity of London, he must necessarily ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... constitution or be able to give an interpretation of it when read to him. As the election officials who would judge the ability of the applicant properly to interpret the constitution would certainly be whites, it was clear that the ignorant black would have scant chance of passing the educational test. Several other states followed in the wake of Mississippi, until in 1898 Louisiana discovered a new barrier through which only whites might make their way to the voting lists. This was the famous "grandfather clause." In brief, it ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... both in the legislature and out of it. The "Double Shuffle" is so typical of this dreary and ignoble warfare and it played so large a part in the political history of the time, that it has been necessary to describe it at some length. But for these considerations, the episode would have deserved scant notice. The headship of one of the ephemeral ministries that preceded confederation could add little to the reputation of Mr. Brown. His powers were not shown at their best in office, and the surroundings of office were ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view, and yet it so fell out that, while ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... But nothing could disguise the firm, erect form, which might have been thought too tall, perhaps, if it had not been round and full in proportion; and the short gown confined at the waist by the long strings of her apron, and the rather scant petticoat of dark winsey that fell beneath it, are not such unbecoming garments as might be supposed by those accustomed to garments ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... not be happy at the nice place in Surrey, having, as she would have, a carriage, even though all the de Courcys should drop her? It had been put to her that she would not like to be received at Courcy Castle with the scant civility which would be considered due to a Mrs Mortimer Gazebee; but what if she could put up without being received at Courcy Castle at all? Such ideas did float through ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... is to a well-known proverb—mandâ hâl wâng Jatt jharî de— as miserable as a Jatt in a shower. Any one who has seen the appearance of the Panjâbî cultivator attempting to go to his fields on a wet, bleak February morning, with his scant clothing sticking to his limp and shivering figure, while the biting wind blows through him, will well understand the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... now," Braceway said to the chief. They each grasped one of the prisoner's arms and hustled him with scant ceremony to his bedroom. Bristow removed his trousers and, unbuckling the belt and straps of the steel brace, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... thick-leaved avenue and out over the stubby sand-hills by the sea. Here and there a large mansion crowned the heights, and Andrew was glad to see the traditional cottage in full relief. He paid it scant attention, however. The procession of carriages had already turned, and his faithful guide uttered many a name which sounded like old sweet music in his ears. Some of the younger faces were unfamiliar; but they, too, bore names that ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... you do scant justice to Dover. It is not quite a place to my taste, being too bandy (I mean musical, no reference to its legs), and infinitely too genteel. But the sea is very fine, and the walks are quite remarkable. There are two ways of going to Folkestone, both lovely ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the most detached way of his blindness and the coming ceremony. Never once, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... er so along, A-strikin' up a sleighin' song. Tel David laughed and yelled, you know, And jes whirped up and sent the snow And gravel flyin' thick and fast— Last Christmas was a year ago. W'y, that-air seven-mild ja'nt we come— Jes seven mild scant from church to home— It didn't 'pear, that day, to be Much furder railly 'n ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... about them Hawthorne "lived" a scant mile from Emerson; in reality they did not live in the same spheres; the boundaries of their worlds did not overlap, but, like two far-separate stars, each felt the distant attraction and admired the glow of the other, and that was all. The real worlds of Thoreau and Alcott ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... French, the vessel on board which I now found myself could scarcely be other than one of those that we had engaged earlier in the afternoon; and if so, I was in the hands of the enemy—an enemy, be it said, that, if report spoke truly, showed but scant mercy to such of its legalised opponents as happened to fall into his hands. Yet this scarcely tallied with the evident care that had been taken of me, and the exceedingly comfortable—not to say luxurious—quarters wherein I now ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... temptation, William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by certain appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which determined all his after life. He spent but a scant two years in college; and the work of the lecture rooms must have suffered seriously during that time from the contention and confusion of the changes then in progress; so that academically the college could not have greatly profited him. The profit ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... all, greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... transcendent. By the aid of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say there is ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... to show angles, while great slabs of rock were split from the faces. The sides also became less vertical, and there was an accumulation of detrital fragments about their bases. These heaps of fractured stone had in some cases begun to disintegrate and form soil, on which there was a scant growth of vegetation; but the sides and summits, whose jaggedness increased with their height, were absolutely bare. "Here," said Cortlandt, "we have unmistakable evidence of frost and ice action. The next interesting question is, How ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... nature is necessary to keep the road from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the wilderness, the saxaoul, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... would have to be content in death with a shorter epitaph. In life his neighbours and acquaintances knew him as the toughest old sinner in Bursfield; and indeed his office hours (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. nominally—but he was an early riser) allowed him scant leisure to practice the Christian graces. Yet though many had occasion to curse Mr. Hucks, few could bring themselves to hate him. The rogue was ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Mr.), daughter and son-in-law to sir Jacob Jollup. Mr. Bruin is a huge bear of a fellow, and rules his wife with scant courtesy.—S. Foote, The Mayor of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... possible to be informed at night of the doings of the day on the other side of the planet, it is hard to realize how little interest was taken a century ago in anything outside of the community in which one lived. This accounts in part, no doubt, for the scant references in this journal to public events. Only very rarely is an election mentioned, even in the writer's own county. Only once is there reference to war, although the war of 1812 and the battle of Waterloo ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... painted in the Corot manner; it is hardly possible that he should not have done so. However this may be, Pissaro did not rid himself for many years of the influence of Corot. His earliest pictures were all composed in pensive greys and violets, and exhaled the weary sadnessof tilth and grange and scant orchard trees. The pale road winds through meagre uplands, and through the blown and gnarled and shiftless fruit-trees the saddening silhouette of the town drifts across the land. The violet spaces between the houses are the very saddest, and the spare ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... repeating rifle multiplied the power of the white man in his conflicts with savage peoples. When all the advantages of the present generation are weighed in the balance against the meagre equipment of the earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the rich promise of the age of the great navigators. Where they could but wonderingly ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... Spanish province of Mexico, but even before the overthrow of Spanish rule a thin stream of immigration had begun to run into it from the South-Western States of America. The English-speaking element became, if not the larger part of the scant population, at least the politically dominant one. Soon after the successful assertion of Mexican independence against Spain, Texas, mainly under the leadership of her American settlers, declared her independence of Mexico. The occasion of this secession was the abolition of Slavery ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... scant time to mourn. Scarcely had he seated himself at his desk when an emergency call came snapping in; a call of such import that his secretary's usually calm voice trembled as she put it on ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... luxury and a necessity. Few readers now collect a library, however scant, without including one of some sort. Many of them, even in the absence of all other books, of themselves constitute a complete library. The Britannica, Edinburgh, Metropolitana, English, Penny, London, Oxford, and that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... thus with her brother: "Dost thou wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing—still less how it had come about. It was said that Janus had died of malignant fever, due to the terrible ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... I'me too true to honour To scant it in the blazing: though to thee All that report can render ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... below!" said Jarette, fiercely; and in a slow surly way first one and then the other was dragged to the hatchway and lowered down, with scant attention to any injuries ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... sky are singularly beautiful; the days are sunny and bright, and even warm in the noon hours; and if we could be free from the many anxieties that oppress us, even now we would be delighted here; but our provisions are getting fearfully scant. Sleighs arrived with baggage about ten o'clock; and leaving a portion of it here, we continued on for a mile and a half, and encamped at the foot of a long hill on this side ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... general relation of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of Christianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. It is a positive religion. It is connected with personalities, above all with one transcendent personality, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... Creek.—M'Nees' Creek, 10 miles (estimated). Water indifferent and uncertain; scant pasture; no wood. Arroyo del la Sena, 2-1/2 miles (estimated). ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... prunes, and lentils swimming in a clear sauce: at these frugal tables, the cook's gridiron hissing near by, and the pot simmering on a fire between two stones, I have seen them ranged by the hundred; consuming, without bread, their scant messes, far too moderate for the keenness of their appetite, and the extent of their stomach.' (Nouveau Paris, iv. 118.) Seine water, rushing plenteous by, will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... deep-set, steel-blue and keen. He had the fighting nose, over-long and hooked like an eagle's beak. The inexorable character of his features was borne out by the mouth, thin-lipped and firm in its closing. Even his beard, scant and touched with gray, was intractable. Here was an Israelite who was a warrior, a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... Poleland, which had at the lest fiue hundred horses; their sumptuousnes was aboue measure, not onely in them selues, but also in their horses, as veluet, cloth of golde, and cloth of siluer set with pearles and not scant. What shall I farther say? I neuer heard of nor saw men so sumptuous: but it is no dayly guise, for when they haue not occasion, as I sayd before, all their doing is but meane. And now to the effect of their warres: They are ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... and noble lady, also of Naples, by name Madam Beritola Caracciola. The said Arrighetto, who had the governance of the island in his hands, hearing that King Charles the First[102] had overcome and slain Manfred at Benevento and that all the realm had revolted to him and having scant assurance of the short-lived fidelity of the Sicilians, prepared for flight, misliking to become a subject of his lord's enemy; but, his intent being known of the Sicilians, he and many other friends and servants of King Manfred were suddenly made prisoners and delivered to King Charles, together ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... York toward Mr. Theodore Thomas is a case in point. There is among the works of the Scottish poet Alexander Wilson, better known as the "American Ornithologist," a ballad entitled "Watty and Meg; or, The Wife Reformed." Its moral is for all to read. Watty's measure of domestic felicity was but scant, and when the burden laid upon him became greater than he could bear he determined to leave the cause of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... scant audiences in country theaters in England, Ireland, and Scotland, always played as if he were before the most brilliant audiences in the great metropolises ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... such diseases, wounds, and injuries as miners are subject to, and he tried his hand at the practical treatment of these conditions, untrammelled by the traditions of a profession in which his training had been so scant. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... counter, or seated at numerous small tables, men were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save when some well known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous chorus. Some were always passing in or out of a door which led into a room behind. Here there was comparative quiet, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... country round about. On the farther bank the long lofty ridge of rock, trodden and licked bare of vegetation for ages by the countless passing buffalo; blackened by rain and sun; only the more desolate for a few dwarfish cedars and other timber scant and dreary to the eye. Encircling this hill in somewhat the shape of a horseshoe, a deep ravine heavily wooded and rank with grass and underbrush. The Kentuckians, disorderly foot and horse, rushing in foolhardiness ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... his self-control with the air of one who does it under great provocation, and who has scant respect for those who lose it; but his face was flushed, and his eyes were angry. The strained coldness of his tone and manner were like oil to the flame of his uncle's wrath. The judge's hand went out in a gesture that had almost the force ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set to guard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed through sixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinly settled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers. The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or Five Nations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to muster more than about ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... scant information on which to proceed," deplored Mrs. Gray. "I confess that I made a mistake in keeping our trouble a secret. Since that newspaper spread the news abroad I have done my best to amend the error. I have seen ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... surprised to find a surprising lack of docility. I doubt whether the Englishman has the veneration for the abstract idea of Law which is common among Americans. Indeed, he is accustomed to treat most abstractions with scant courtesy. There is nothing quite corresponding to the average American's feeling about a decision of the Supreme Court. The Law has spoken, let all the land keep silent. It seems like treason to criticize it, like ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... to be saved from those who saw the first boat was heartrending. Some of them threatened to jump into the water if we did not take them aboard. But it was impossible with the scant boat supply to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the week, when Riverville was the boundary of her interests, a letter from him would have had scant attention. But coming at this time, when a homesick mood brought the old life so vividly before her that it had suddenly become very dear and desirable, she opened it eagerly. It was the first one she had received from him, for she had told him on leaving Lone-Rock that she could not correspond with ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... applause. Indeed, my memory enshrines rather a feeling of regret that so painstaking and able an effort should have met with so chilling a reception, and that an heir-apparent to a peerage, who has had the courage to propose a scheme for the reform of the House of Lords, should receive such scant attention ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... sky to the south a succession of his rounded slopes shoulder their way from the woods out to where the road and the brook wind through. They cannot be tilled; the soil is too scant and gravelly; but they are lovely in their gentle forms, and still lovelier in their clumps of mingled cedars and gray birches, scattered dark and sharply pointed on the blue of the sky, and diffuse, and soft, and gleaming white ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... instinct for all men of family or title to be found among the undergraduates was amazingly extensive and acute; and she had paid much court to Falloden, as the prospective heir to a marquisate. He had hitherto treated her with scant attention, but she was not easily abashed, and she fastened at once on Lady Laura, whom she had seen once at ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "bird-fair" every summer, where jackdaws, starlings, and other birds are sold, with a few rabbits thrown in; but the fair now is chiefly an excuse for a holiday. The church was three hundred feet long, with the convent-buildings to the southward, but only scant ruins remain. Beyond the ruins, at the edge of the greensward, the river glides along under a gray stone bridge. At Howsham, in the neighborhood, Hudson the railway king was born, and at Foston-le-Clay Sydney Smith lived, having for his friends the Earl and Countess of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... was sufficient to demonstrate how sharp were those savage eyes. No white man in the short half-circle dared to waste a single shot now; all realized that their stock of ammunition was becoming fearfully scant, yet those scheming devils continually baited ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... conservative and enamored of force. In 1830 four-fifths of the population lived by agriculture and the landlord governed his peasants patriarchally. He kept the conservatist spirit of a rustic, a very lively sense of authority and the military instinct. He had scant liking for distant enterprises or adventures. He was at once religious, warlike, and realist, knowing how to nurse his ambitions and to confine his view to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... dwelling, for he had judged his interlocutor to be some rich and eccentric noble, unless he were an erratic scamp. He was somewhat taken aback by the spectacle that met his eyes. The furniture was scant, and all in the style of the last century. The dust lay half an inch thick on the old gilded ornaments and chandeliers. A great pier-glass was cracked from corner to corner, and the metallic backing seemed to be scaling off behind. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... varying change of toiling Time restore prosperity; often Fortune in broken visits makes man her sport and again establishes him. The Aetolian of Arpi will not help us; but Messapus will, and Tolumnius the fortunate, and the captains sent by many a nation; nor will fame be scant to follow the flower of Latium and the Laurentine land. Camilla the Volscian too is with us, leading her train of cavalry, squadrons splendid in brass. But if I only am claimed by the Teucrians for combat, if that is your pleasure, and I am the barrier to the public good, Victory does ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... capacity for work adapted him for a profession in which mathematical knowledge is of value or for magisterial functions. The misfortunes of our family caused him to follow a different career, and he underwent many hardships with unshaken courage. He never complained of his lot, though life had scant enjoyment save that which is derived from love of home. These joys are, however, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... first person off the ferry when it came to a stop on the farther side of the river. Ahead of him lay the road through the narrow belt of trees that lined the bank. He knew that a scant hundred yards lay between the river and the open road beyond and yet a vast dread possessed him. He shrank from that black opening in the wall of trees where dead leaves rustled and the wind whispered ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... as gladly and full-fed hath fared Upon a broken crust that two have shared; And from scant wine as glorious dreams drawn up Seeing two lovers kissed ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... and shining being of the deep light appeared to me three circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second as Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathed equally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance, and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that it sufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyself abidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... toughest hang-outs in sailor town and play my part in any rough-house that started or call all hands to the bar—I didn't know the first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a girl-woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe-tops and who was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was, or thought I was, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... reluctance will she follow the raised camp. The friends and relatives of the young mourner will incessantly devise methods to distract her mind from the thought of her lost husband. She refuses nourishment but as nature is exhausted she is prevailed upon to partake of food; the supply is scant, but on every occasion the best and largest proportion is deposited upon the grave of her husband. In the mean time the female relatives of the deceased have according to custom submitted to her charge a parcel made up of different cloths ornamented with ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... artillery—furnished special occasions for organized—or disorganized—upheavals of animal spirits. For these exercises we then had scant respect. They were "soldiering;" and from time immemorial soldier had been an adjective to express uselessness, or that which was so easy as to pass no man's ability. A soldier's wind, for example, was a wind fair both ways—to go and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... the day, And takes our autumn joys away; When short and scant the sunbeam throws, Upon the weary waste of snows, A cold and profitless regard, Like patron on a needy bard, When silvan occupation's done, And o'er the chimney rests the gun, And hang, in idle trophy, near, The game-pouch, fishing-rod, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... Incas remained huddled together on the ledge without, but they made no effort to attack us. I had been watching perhaps three hours when they began to melt away into the passage. Soon but a scant dozen or so remained. These squatted along the wall just under the lighted urns, evidently ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... Dublin. Mr. —— is a man of aldermanic proportions. He chartered an outside car, t'other day, at Island Bridge Barrack, and drove to the post-office. On arriving he tendered the driver sixpence, which was strictly the fare, though but scant remuneration for the distance. The jarvey saw at a glance the small coin, but in place of taking the money which Mr. ——held in his hands, he busied himself putting up the steps of the vehicle, and then, going to the well at the back of the car, took thence a piece of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... cold, when a lonely wanderer came down the street. It was a lad, big and strong-limbed, and, judging from the manner in which he pushed his way through the gathering drifts, not unused to battle with the world, but evidently in hard luck. His jacket, white with the falling snow, was scant and worn nearly to rags, and there was that in his face which spoke of hunger and suffering silently endured. He stopped at the gate in the stone fence, and looked long and steadily at the cottage in the chestnuts. No life stirred within, and he walked through the gap with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... been living on scant rations, corn, watermelon and other vegetables principally, but in spite of this Bob's arm was mending somewhat. He had to sleep with it pillowed on my breast, Jim being also crippled with a wound in his shoulder, and we could not get much sleep. The wound in my thigh ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... then. Some drunken artisan, who faced discharge on the morrow. Ivan turned from the window; but quickly returned to it. Vulgarly drunk the man might be. But even the fires of alcohol form scant protection against such cold as reigned to-day. The man might be frozen ere an officer perceived him. Moreover, as Ivan looked again, something in the recumbent figure suggested the abandon rather of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes,"[9] and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the undertaking, he had ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... indicated a chair with his disengaged hand and plunged again into his proof-slips. The stranger surveyed the scant furniture and appointments of the office with a look of grave curiosity, and then, taking a chair, fixed an earnest, penetrating gaze on the editor's profile. The editor felt it, and, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... M.D. by the paint upon his window, dwelt in the Dabney House; Mr. Heth—pronounced Heath if you value his wife's good opinion—dwelt in the House of his cognomen. Between the two lay a scant mile of city streets. But then this happened to be the particular mile which traversed, while of course it could not ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... turn he offered him passage but Matt preferred to ride the sheriff's horse. He was unable to understand or appreciate any friendly offers from Glen, for he felt that his share in the proceedings had been ludicrous if not contemptible and expected scant mercy from either Glen or Chick-chick. As a matter of fact, Glen would have been very glad to have his company, both that he might repay his good turn and that he might have the advantage of his experience in cycling, for Glen was a rank ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... to make Congress appreciate the probable long duration of the struggle, and he bent every energy to giving permanency to his army, and decisiveness to each campaign. The other idea which had grown in his mind during the weary siege was that the Tories were thoroughly dangerous and deserved scant mercy. In his second letter to Gage he refers to them, with the frankness which characterized him when he felt strongly, as "execrable parricides," and he made ready to treat them with the utmost severity at New York and elsewhere. When Washington ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... appearance of the half-insensible de Courtois than Steingall. He gave him one penetrating glance, and would have known the man again after ten years had they been parted that instant; but, if he favored the Frenchman with scant attention, he made no scruples about examining the documents on the table, though his first care was to thank the workman, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... Santa Cruz died, and Spain lost her best and most experienced admiral. King Philip put in his place a great noble, Guzman, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who pleaded in vain to be excused, frankly declaring to his sovereign that he felt unfit for such high command, as he had scant knowledge of war and no experience of the sea. It is supposed that the King persisted in the nomination because Medina-Sidonia's hereditary rank would place him above the jealousies of the subordinate commanders, and he hoped to supply ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... Mme. Swann, letting trail behind her the long train of her lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be dressed, in rich attire such as no other woman might wear, lowering her eyes now and then to study the handle of her parasol, paying scant attention to the passers-by, as though the important thing for her, her one object in being there, was to take exercise, without thinking that she was seen, and that every head was turned towards her. Sometimes, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... stems of the rather scant show of carnations and refreshed them with new water. At dinner, her father, still in high spirits, observed that she had again "dressed up" in honour of his second descent of the stairs; and Walter repeated his fragment of objectionable song; ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... the committee persuaded a few colored farmers to try deep plowing on a small scale as an experiment. One of the first of these was a poor man who had had the hardest kind of a struggle scraping a scant existence out of the soil for himself and his large family. He was desperate and agreed to try the new method. He got results the first year, moved on to better land and followed instructions. In a few years he bought 500 acres of land, gave each of his four sons 100 acres, ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... lookest thou one him halfe a scorne I pomise you he is a scant gentylman borne 630 What ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous

... rested day or night. He rushed from one end of the country to the other, addressing meetings, fighting elections, stimulating his followers, answering his defamers and all the time exhausting the scant reserves of strength that were ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... showed some wild-horse bands, but not many, for there appeared to be scant grass and water. These horses were going or coming, all on a trot, but when they sighted the hunters they would halt stock-still. Soon a stallion trotted out a hundred paces or more, snorted and whistled, then taking to his heels he led his ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... frontage high into the night. A peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one running violently down the stairs. This was followed by the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating footsteps in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... heels was frequently put in requisition without the slightest ceremony. As might be supposed, the number that finally reached their destination, was distressingly out of proportion to the work to be done; and the Sheriff, after detaining them for a time, was reported to have dismissed them with but scant courtesy. ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... some right to pride himself on his personal appearance, for he has a handsome face, with a dark blue eye and a fine intellectual brow. His head is growing scant of hair on the crown, which induces him to be somewhat particular in the management of his locks in that locality, and these are assuming ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... backwoods, until homeless old age had overtaken him. Four years before he had spent a summer at Big Malcolm's, helping perfunctorily in the harvest fields, working little and singing much, and when the first hard frost had set the forest aflame he had gathered his poor, scant bundle of clothes into his carpet-bag preparatory to taking ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... in a low voice, "this is but scant courtesy to your cousin and guest, the Princess ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks



Words linked to "Scant" :   render, short, skimp, insufficient, stint, light, provide, supply



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com