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Paucity   /pˈɔsəti/   Listen
Paucity

noun
1.
An insufficient quantity or number.  Synonym: dearth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Paucity" Quotes from Famous Books



... where the carrots were as yet untouched. When I so ventured, he scolded me and quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in that direction was some horrible danger, but just what the horrible danger was his paucity of language would not ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... of Savoy is difficult to treat in a volume like the present, because it requires a book to itself. It is not the paucity of material, but the quantity, that is embarrassing. The great palace which stood here first was built by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, one of the Barons to whom our present Constitution is due. By one of the frequent vicissitudes ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... themselves at one period of their lives. Why these people are called Miguelets it is not easy to say, but it is probable that they have derived this appellation from the name of their original leader. I regret that the paucity of my own information will not allow me to enter into farther particulars with respect to this corps, concerning which I have little doubt that many ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... its appearance, after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more room for such ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Several months had found him inconsolable, and when desperation had closed upon him he had wedded an estimable lady whose wealth was less dazzling than Mary's, but ample none the less. Her personal paucity of allurement was a handicap which his philosophy ignored as much as possible. In private he sometimes made a fastidious ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... however, a few references to events in this period which are to be found only outside the New Testament, and are of importance to the student of Church history. These are the Neronian persecution ( 1), the death of the Apostles ( 2, 3), and the persecution under Domitian ( 4). The paucity of references to Christianity in the first century is due chiefly to the fact that Christianity appeared to the men of the times as merely a very small Oriental religion, struggling for recognition, and contending ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... begotten, none the less, of that same "judicious" sacrifice to a particular form of interest! One's work should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty; but all the while—apart from one's inevitable consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive beauty—how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for! Once ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... When our unexpected visitants, deeming themselves fortunate in having found a refuge, prepared to join our repast, it was ludicrous to observe the lengthened faces of our servants at this addition to our party. They, having previously lamented the paucity of provisions in the larder, and being aware of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of procuring a further supply, looked on the new-comers as interlopers, who would inevitably diminish the already too ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... integritas ... in contractibus, ut uno tantum verbo res ipsas indicarent omni verbositate in fraudem emptoris omissa. (Herberstein, 52.) In the England of the present day, the custom of marking each piece of goods with its price is very general. Concerning the rapidity and the paucity of words with which prices are settled in that country, where business men do not even salute their customers, nor customers the business man, see C. G. Simon, Observations recueillies en Angleterre, 1835, I, 129 f. The Athenian laws (?), that fixed prices should be asked, and that sellers ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... the very poorest schools connected with the Edinburgh Ladies' Highland School Association, but the teacher had a remarkable paucity of clothing, and he seemed to have the charge of his baby, which, much clothed, and indeed much muffled, lay on the bench beside him. For there were benches, and a desk, and even a blackboard and primers ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... reason and for another it was held by comparatively small numbers. Botha was an acute observer and had learnt the moves of the British autumn manoeuvre opening, a holding attack on the centre not intended to be pushed home in order to eke out paucity of numbers operating on a wide front. Lord Roberts, in spite of his superiority of strength, could not hope to inflict a decisive defeat upon Botha's well-posted commandos, but only to remove them out of striking distance of Pretoria, and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... paucity of proverbs relating to religion in the older collections, we infer that this saying is Henderson's own, as it ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... the time; I scout it still. If you write a novel, you run a great risk. One of these days somebody may read it—you never know what queer things people may do nowadays. And if somebody should read it, your secret is out, and the paucity of your imagination stands grimly exposed. No, I shall not write a novel, although this article will be something in the nature of a novelette. For I have found a heroine, and many a full-blown novelist, having found a heroine, would consider that he had come ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... otherwise? It may be observed, however, that here, as everywhere else in this right little tight little isle, where habit is the very antithesis of the airy license of "Abroad," it is not, as it is in the artistic haunts of the Continent, en regle to vaunt one's self on the paucity of one's shekels or to acknowledge acquaintance with the Medici's pills in their modern form ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... place, you do not write correctly; in the second, you have nothing to say. We cannot afford to print words merely—much less pay for them. What is worse, many of your sentences are so unnatural and turgid as to suggest that you sought in stimulants a remedy for paucity of ideas. Take friendly advice. Attempt something that you are capable of doing, and build your hopes on that. Any honest work—even sawing wood—well done, is better than childish efforts to perform what, to us, is impossible. Before you ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... Master lined up his Legionaries for inspection and final instructions. Standing there in military array, fully armed, they made rather a formidable body of fighters despite their paucity of numbers. Courage, eagerness, and joy—still unalloyed by all the fatigues and perils of the long trek after adventure—showed on every face. Even through the eyeholes of "Captain ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... say, a host in himself. He was a fine tall man, with very popular manners; and though he showed that he would not allow tricks to be played, he ingratiated himself wonderfully with all classes. He took great pains to conceal from the Dutch the paucity of our numbers, and hinted that as long as the inhabitants behaved themselves he would keep his troops on board instead of quartering them on the town. These troops were represented by the idlers of the different ships and occasionally seamen, dressed up ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... the one hand the theory of the plurality of worlds in the sense implying that all existing worlds are inhabited, and on the other hand the theory of but one world, we should accept a theory which might be entitled the Paucity of Worlds, only that relative not absolute paucity must be understood. It is absolutely certain that this theory is the correct one, if we admit two postulates, neither of which can be reasonably questioned—viz., first, that the life-bearing era of any world is short compared with the entire duration ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... of the linguistic factor may help to throw light on the point in question. Here again we may trace the same isolation and the same uniformity which we have also seen in the world of economics. There was an infinity of dialects, but a paucity of languages, in the Middle Ages. One is told that to-day there are dialects in the Bight of Heligoland and among the Faroes which are peculiar to a single family. Something of the same sort must have existed in the Middle Ages. Just as there were local customs ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... to be able to get well ahead with their operations and endeavor to strike some decisive blow as early as possible. It was a matter of life and death to them, for, if they had gone by the more southern route, they could not have hoped, in view of the paucity of the roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of time. This loss of time would mean time gained by the Russians for the bringing up of their troops to the German frontier. Rapidity of action was the great German asset, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... from the paucity of records in the literature that the Eastern Wood Pewee is uncommon in Coahuila. Burleigh and Lowery (1942:194) obtained two males at the Chorro del Agua, and remarked also that "it is possible that as far west as Saltillo, this species is a rather uncommon ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban

... scene, with all its priceless relics of another age, its warmth, its lights, its rows of bowing flunkeys and his new-found friends, its dream of a crown and distant throne, arose a passing vision of a life he had laid aside. There the plenty of yesterday melted in the paucity of to-day. There cringing cold had crept forlornly in and hunger had been no unexpected guest. There hope and ambition on their brows had ever borne the bruising thorns of defeat and failure. There wealth was a surprising stranger and poverty ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... never fail to keep your promise. It is cruel to the lady of the house to accept, and then send an apology at the last moment. Especially do not break your word on account of bad weather. You may be certain that many others will, and the inciter will be mortified by the paucity of her guests. A cloak and a carriage will secure you from all inconvenience, and you will be conferring a ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman

... road in existence was of most recent construction, which represented the new birth of British enterprise, from Larnaca to the capital, Nicosia (or Lefkosia), about twenty-eight miles. The regrettable paucity of stone-hammers rendered it impossible to prepare the metal, therefore huge rounded blocks, bigger than a man's head, had been thrown down for a foundation, upon which some roughly broken and a quantity of unbroken smaller stones ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... author. Though Shakespeare is for all time, he is part and parcel of the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories; they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their variety of subject, their intense interest ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... little luxury. Paucity of money gave rise to that habit of barter and dicker in trade which was a mannerism of our fathers. Agriculture formed the basal industry, especially in the Southern colonies; yet in New England and Pennsylvania both manufactures and commerce thrived. Pennsylvania's yearly foreign commerce exceeded ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the money warn't thar, ye wouldn't hev believed me," Lora-linda Byars said drearily, when certain disappointed wights, who had sought elsewhere and far a-field, repaired to the cabin laughing at their own plight and upbraiding her with the paucity of the cache. "I knowed all the time what war in that box. The man lef' it thar in the niche arter he war shot, it bem' heavy ter tote an' not wuth much. But he brung the money with him, an' tuk it off, bein', ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... it means the pictorial enhancing of the telling incidents of a dramatic situation such as we find it in Rembrandt's treatment of the Crucifixion, Deposition, or Entombment. Now it seems to me the paucity of successes on these lines in one who nevertheless occasionally entirely succeeds, is what is most striking in Duerer. Perhaps when dealing with the graphic arts one should rather speak of great character than great ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... story soon gets wind, so here the Meggat's Land romance was by-and-by all over the city. Nor did it take less fantastic forms than usual, where sympathies and antipathies are strong in proportion to the paucity of the facts on which they are fed. It was a favourite opinion of some, that the case could only be cleared by supposing that a dead stranger child had been surreptitiously passed off, and even coffined, as the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... here made. This intimation may be equally applied to the whole subject of New Holland: about which the reader may promise himself very ample satisfaction in the course of this collection. Let this then be accepted as a pledge in apology for the paucity of observations ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... military verdure. The fact is, that the shore of Syria is pre-eminently deficient in natural harbors, or facilities for harbors—those which exist have been formed by art and severe contest with the opposition of nature. Hence their extreme paucity, and hence their disproportionate importance in every possible war.] from the accident of being the very first fortified town to those entering Palestine from the side of Egypt. On the 4th of March this place was invested; on the 6th, barely forty-eight hours ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... compete, he hesitated to enter the contest, not wishing to lose the reputation he had so recently won. Yet owing to the fact that it was expected of him, he entered his name, actuated by no other motive than to distinguish himself as a scholar. As there was then a paucity of literature on slavery in England, his first researches in this field were not productive of gratifying results. "I was in this difficulty," says Clarkson, "when going by accident into a friend's house, I took up a newspaper there lying on the table. One of the first articles which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Chatham. When I had roused myself up, to my consternation, I discovered that my pillow was nowhere to be found. Many of the passengers had already gone their ways, and those who remained knew nothing about me or my packet. Indeed, I only drew suspicions on myself, as my paucity of baggage and the pretensions of my dress were decidedly at variance. The gentleman in top-boots and with the brown paper parcel seemed ridiculous enough. Seeing how ineffectual noise was, I held my peace, now that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... in the first instance, upon the members of some one large, special profession, as upon artists, leaders in commerce, investigators, scholars, warriors, and so forth, then to divide these into subclasses, until more appears to be lost through paucity of material than is ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster

... inwrought with the documentary history and the personal narratives of the time, exaggeration and misrepresentation were then almost so consistent with honesty, that any one who essays to digest trustworthy history from them may be more embarrassed by the abundance than he would be by the paucity of his materials. Our author has spared no pains or expense in the gathering of plans, pamphlets, and solid volumes, in procuring copies of unpublished documents, and in consulting all the known sources of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... through life with downcast eyes and a vision somewhat dimmed by indifference; forgetting, as he progresses, the small scraps of knowledge he acquired by looking sharply during the period of boyhood, when every living creature excited his attention. In Italy, notwithstanding the paucity of bird life, I believe that the peasants know their birds better. The reason of this is not far to seek; every bird, not excepting even the "temple-haunting martlet" and nightingale and minute golden-crested wren, is regarded only as a possible morsel to give a savour to a dish ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... spent in the harbour. The weather was bad; and to this cause in the main we may attribute the paucity of the observations made, and the defective account given of the port itself. It contains two islands: Phillip Island, facing the strait, and French Island, the larger of the two, lying between Phillip Island and the mainland. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... symbolism in Saint-Saens's opera. It is frankly a piece for the lyric theatre, albeit one in which adherence to a plot suggested by the Biblical story compelled a paucity of action which had to be made good by spectacle and music. The best element in a drama being that which finds expression in action and dialogue, and these being restricted by the obvious desire of the composers to avoid such extraneous matter as ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race from a purely critical and scientific standpoint. It must be admitted on all hands that the result was eminently successful, taking into account the paucity of the available material, and the "Antiquity of Man" must ever remain one of the classics of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... importance in industry, the increasing abundance of the foreign supply, and the ever-widening area of production, practical men in England continue to distrust its permanence, and owing to the mystery surrounding its origin, and the paucity of indications where and how to undertake the boring of wells, they hesitate to seek for it in this country, or even to extend the use of it whenever that would involve alterations of existing machinery. The object ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... that their external appearance is not such as to give at first sight a good opinion of them. To come and pay a visit to the object of their love with a leg without any ornaments, a hat without any feathers, a head with its locks not artistically arranged, and a coat that suffers from a paucity of ribbons. Heavens! what lovers are these! what stinginess in dress! what barrenness of conversation! It is not to be allowed; it is not to be borne. I ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... would transplant, be not above 6 or 7 foot growth in height: Yet if any be desirous to make tryal of it, let their stems be of the smoothest and tenderest bark; for that is ever an indication of youth, as well as the paucity of their circles, which in disbranching and cutting the head off, at five or six foot height (a thing, by the way, which the French usually spare when they transplant this tree) may (before you stir their roots) ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... starling, and that of the fourth sub-group, Camarhynchus, is slightly parrot-shaped. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. In a like manner it might be fancied that a bird, originally a buzzard, had been induced here to undertake the office of the carrion-feeding Polybori of the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... sufficiency of evidence actually under examination, however, I have never suggested, much less asserted, that the "Acts of the Apostles" was not in existence at this date. The only interest attachable to the question is, as I have before said, the paucity of the testimony regarding the book, to demonstrate which it has been necessary to discuss all such supposed allusions. But the apologetic argument characteristically ignores the fact that "many took in hand" at an early date to set forth the Christian story, and that the books of our New Testament ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... to Eusebius: "Nor were the apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry which is above all human power." Eccles. Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.—The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first century of its ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... her reason. Little did he know, as he stood now on the bulkhead and looked down at her, that at the moment Dorothea was finishing mentally a poem in which with "wild tears" and "clasping hands," he had bidden her an eternal farewell—by moonlight. She was, moreover, perturbed by the paucity of her native language. There appeared to be nothing to rhyme with "love" except "shove," "above," and "dove." Of these one was impossible and two were trite. Scowling fiercely at the ocean, she finally gave the bird to the hungry line and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... as at this time not exceeding a hundred. Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase that there is no episcopal chapel in the place. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors; nor can the expence of an academical education be very reasonably objected. A student of the highest class may keep his annual session, or as the English call it, his term, which lasts seven months, for about fifteen pounds, and one of lower rank for less than ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... party, even upon his own, and he could only muster the support of seventy members against three hundred and ninety-four. This motion greatly damaged the prestige of Mr. Disraeli: it was thought that he was not competent to lead a great party, and but for the paucity of talent in the conservative ranks, his leadership would have immediately terminated. In the country generally, but especially in the large cities and manufacturing districts, the speech excited a stronger political hostility to Mr. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... existence of this family on its shores, excepting from the total absence of any one plant of Proteaceae at those parts of Rottnest and Dirk Hartog's Islands visited during the Bathurst's voyage; an inference may be drawn of the general paucity of any part of the order on the shores of the neighbouring main. Although no species have been found common to shores opposite to each other, in the higher latitudes, the identity of Grevillea mimosoides, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is the only ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... after a considerable interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving well. She replied 'As usual.' Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, 'You mean that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of intention and a paucity of performance.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... tender braird above the soil. The relics of the walls that crowned the cliffs have almost entirely disappeared. No Etruscan site has so few remains; and yet its interest is intensified by the extreme desolation. It is more suggestive to the imagination because of the paucity of its objects to appeal to the eye. Legend and history haunt the spot with nothing to distract the mind or dispel its musing melancholy. All trace of human passion has disappeared, and only the eternal calm of nature broods over the spot; the calm that was before man came upon the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... curate or two—such odd-come-shorts as can be got together in a scattered country neighborhood at briefest notice. Barbara and I, as it happens, are both late. It is five minutes past eight, when with the minor details of our toilets a good deal slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack of necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and find all our guests already come together. Mother gives us an almost imperceptible glance of gentle ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... a sense of fulness about his stomach; these complaints increasing, his abdomen gradually enlarged, and a fluctuation in it became perceptible. He had no anasarca, no appearance of diseased viscera, and no great paucity of urine. Purges and diuretics of different kinds affording him no relief, my assistance was desired. After trying squill medicines without effect, he was ordered to take Pulv. fol. Digital. in small doses. These producing no sensible effect, ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... point would certainly have been better, and would have won for him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel had advised him to do this; but the accused had obstinately refused, thinking, no doubt, that he would save everything by admitting nothing. It was an error; but ought not the paucity of this intelligence to be taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid. Long-continued wretchedness in the galleys, long misery outside the galleys, had brutalized him, etc. He defended himself badly; was that a reason for condemning ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... was to be added to affliction. A few hundred dollars made up the sum of all that she received after the settlement of his business, which had never been in a very prosperous condition. On this, under the exercise of extreme frugality, she had been enabled to live for nearly a year. Then the paucity of her little store made it apparent to her mind that individual exertion was required, directed toward procuring the means of support for her little family. Ignorant of the way in which this was to be done, and having no one to advise her, nearly two months more passed before she could ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones. Wretched are they, and mean With paucity that never was simplicity. By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever mourns in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; Whatever shares The ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen

... seeing the necessity of common action, called all the scattered Jesuits of Paraguay and the river Plate to a conference at Salta to deliberate as to their future policy.* In 1605 Father Diego Torres was named Provincial of the Jesuits of Paraguay and Chile, thus proving both the paucity of Jesuits in South America at the time, and the little idea the General in Rome had of the immensity of the countries ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... wife and children; it is a painful necessity, but there is nothing heroic in it. If people choose to put a higher value on the means than on the end, I can only pass with a shrug of the shoulders, and regret the paucity of ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... upon the quantity of carbonic acid gas the wine contains, and this, in turn, upon the amount of its natural saccharine. If the gas be present in excess, there will be a shattering of bottles and a flooding of cellars; and if there be a paucity the corks will refuse to pop, and the wine to sparkle aright in the glass. Therefore the amount of saccharine in the cuve has to be accurately ascertained by means of a glucometer; and if it fails to reach the required ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... not esteemed a kindness; for surely it is a kindly thing to think of it; and for whom but for one for whom he cared would he be counting the bottles to be left at her disposal, insomuch that the paucity of the bottles of sherry in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... extent systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the aparchai to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete. In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same. Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... went in to have a chat with the Superintendent. He was rather nervous and downcast, and apparently feared that we had formed a poor opinion of his gaol. He apologised quite humbly for the paucity of prisoners, and explained that times were bad, and there was little or nothing doing in the criminal world of St. Kitts. He really did not know what had come to the place lately. He perfectly remembered, in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... second question, we have examined briefly the extant evidence regarding the actor's employment of gesture and business, his delivery of the dialogue, make-up and character delineation, and found a disappointing paucity, but a general and irresistible trend towards liveliness, vivacity and broad undiluted comedy that must have been the sort of dramatic fare demanded by the primeval appetite of the Plautine audience. But again we find ourselves ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... this factor of the standard of living, both in the way of retrenchment in the obscurer elements of consumption that go to physical comfort and maintenance, and also in the paucity or absence of children, is perhaps seen at its best among the classes given to scholarly pursuits. Because of a presumed superiority and scarcity of the gifts and attainments that characterize their life, these classes are by convention subsumed under a higher social grade than their ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... strong argument against the mythical theory of the miracles of our Lord may be constructed from the paucity of the miracles attributed to Paul. If that age naturally wove miraculous legends round great names, why did it not encircle Paul with a continuous web of miracle? and why does the New Testament admit that the Baptist worked ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... other there is a paucity of woodpeckers on the Nilgiris. The Indian Empire can boast of no fewer than fifty-four species; of these only six patronise the Nilgiris, and but two appear to ascend higher than 5000 feet. The only woodpecker that I have noticed in the vicinity of Coonoor ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... importance in this matter, and that trees can be fertilized, sprayed, injected or treated with them in other ways to insure their growth, health, crop bearing ability, longevity, disease—frost—and drought—resistance. There still exists a paucity of scientific explanations on these subjects, but there is already a good deal of scattered information, which it is my purpose to draw to your attention. People do not care about scientific facts if they can obtain ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... walk in." The mansion, though much later in date, was built precisely on the lines of a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house. It had the same basement, the same general disposition of rooms, the same abundance of stairs and paucity of baths, the same chilly draughts and primeval devices for heating, and the same superb disregard for the convenience of servants. The patrons of domestic architecture had permitted architects to learn nothing in seventy years except that chimney-flues must be constructed so that they could ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... with the proverbial pink rejection slip. Why are drawings and photographs rejected? What is wrong with the great mass of rejected material? My observation is that they suffer more from a lack of clear thinking and careful execution than from a paucity of ideas. ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America

... of censure from the multiplicity than paucity of examples, authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have been omitted. But a work of this kind is not hastily to be charged with superfluities; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... the denotation; and this is what is aimed at in every definition of a general name already in use. But we must not confound the use of names of indeterminate connotation, which is so great an evil, with the employment, necessitated by the paucity of names as compared with the demand, of the same words with different connotations in ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The House of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short "Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a full current if only left free to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... and all caution were useless to us six bent on attacking the colonel and his staff. We crawled out of cover and advanced, stopping to fire one or two shots and then scrambling closer, giving away our own paucity of numbers, but increasing the chance of doing damage with each yard gained. And our recklessness had the additional advantage of making the staff reckless too. The colonel kept in close hiding, but the rest of them ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... across the room, silent and cavern-like, its blackness broken by the window squares of starry sky, till he felt the paucity ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... rude and imperfect state of science at this period, the paucity and inadequacy of the instruments by means of which it might be improved, and the superstitions and prejudices which opposed the removal of error or the establishment of truth, we shall not be disposed to question the justice of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... interested by your letter of the 28th, received this morning. It has DELIGHTED me, because it demonstrates that you have thought a good deal lately on Natural Selection. Few things have surprised me more than the entire paucity of objections and difficulties new to me in the published reviews. Your remarks are of a different stamp and new to me. I will run through them, and make a few pleadings such as occur ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... them, as I could judge by the whistling of their departing wings and by the silvery furrows where they had left the water. It is curious how strong the daylight must become before the eye can distinguish a duck in flight. The comparative paucity of numbers, I reflected, was probably due to the fact that the ducks used this pond merely as a loafing place during the day. Therefore I should anticipate a good flight as soon as feeding time should be over; especially as one end of the pond proved ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... considering the paucity of well-qualified ministers, hath a very unfavourable aspect with respect to destitute churches at home, where charity ought to begin. I had the pleasure once to see and hear Mr. Carey; it struck me he was the most suitable ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... earnestness by a different observer. He may then realize something of the interest which attaches to the explanation of this phenomenon—may even experience a sort of mental vertigo, as if he had witnessed the evolution of a world out of nothing. Owing to the paucity of the facts to be observed, the finesse requisite for the observation, and the intellectual dexterity needed to retain such minute circumstances before the mind long enough to think about them, the problem is one of the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... The paucity of baggage would not have mattered so much had the march begun at the commencement of summer, instead of just as winter was setting in. In the former case, men could have slept in the open air, and a solitary blanket and one change of clothes would have sufficed; but ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... ask for him?" "Too much for any of you to pay," said I. "A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you." "How do you know that?" said one; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. "Come, let us know what you ask for him?" "A hundred and fifty pounds!" said I; "neither more nor less." "Do you call that a great price?" said the man. "Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself injustice, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... revolution of 1836, it has expanded into a population of about seven hundred souls. The town occupies a plain, bounded by a lofty ridge. The dwellings are the reverse of pompous, being all built of mud bricks. The houses are remarkable for a paucity of windows, glass being inordinately dear; even parchment almost unattainable, and the artists in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... the place was an oubliette," said I. "As a matter of fact, the path down is an easy one, there are no flints, and there is a singular paucity of seaweed of any description. On the other hand, the sun is hot, the sand is soft, and I have already selected that rock, in the seclusion of whose shade I shall prepare myself for the waves. Sorry it's too dangerous for you. I'll write ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... British shipping. This I deny is any thing like an equivalent, as the trade with America is carried on almost exclusively in American bottoms. I particularly noted at New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, the paucity of British vessels in those ports; and ascertained that it was the practice among American merchants, who it must be observed are nearly all extensive ship-owners, to withhold cargos, even at some inconvenience, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... whispered conversation was carried on that had no reference to the girl. It was nearly eleven o'clock when Nevill left the house, and bade Stephen Foster good-night on the step. He knew the way in spite of the darkness and the paucity of street lamps. Having lighted a cigar, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... there are saloons to cater to his cheer. In contradistinction to the custom in this country, the business has been taken up by others than the worthy order of sextons. That this condition should be, is accounted for by the fact that there is a paucity of churches in the town, and that the sextons were unable to accomplish the work that devolved upon their craft. Death is not attributable, in the main, to natural causes in Wilkes-Barre; it is brought about by ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... Casor as altogether exceptional and peculiar to an early period in the growth of slavery before custom had fully crystallized into law. It is true that similar examples are hard to find in the seventeenth century when the free Negroes were few in number. But if from the paucity of examples it is argued that such a case was a freak of the seventeenth century and that nothing similar could have occurred after slavery became a settled and much regulated institution, the answer is that slave-owning by free Negroes was ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... too, it may be, from the very paucity of the vegetable forms they could find to copy among the flora of this colder clime; and so, stopped short in drawing from nature, ran off into mere purposeless luxuriance. Had they been able to add to their stock of memories a hundred forms ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... pardon. This is no imaginary picture. In that brief golden age of the Church, such were indeed the characteristics of the Christian society. In the opinion of Dobschuetz the moral condition of the Church in the second century was much higher than among St. Paul's converts in the first. The paucity of references to sins of the flesh, and to fraud, is to be accounted for by the actual rarity of such offences. For a short time, then, the artificial selection effected by the persecutions kept the Church pure; and from the happy pictures which we can ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the University for several years; supplying his few wants by writing for scientific journals, or by giving assistance to students who, like myself, were characterized by a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking, studying and sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... South, where, owing to the great size of States and to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was not yet a force. Each State, being in square miles ample enough for an empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent nation. The State was near and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... also serve to reconcile the opinion now generally entertained of the richness of the gold deposits by the few experienced miners who have seen the Couteau country, with the present paucity ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... the continental congress heretofore referred to, Governor Arthur St. Clair, in the year 1788, opened up a correspondence with the tribes of the northwest in order to bring them to a treaty. The government, though suffering from a paucity of funds, had determined to enter into engagements looking to the fair and equitable purchase of the Indian lands. It was plainly to be seen that unless an accommodation could be arrived at with the tribes that the government either had to abandon the territory north of the Ohio, or levy war. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... evolution furnish a training of thought which was impossible to the ancients; but Thucydides has digested his material and compressed his narrative without taking the life out of his story in a manner to make us despair, and this does not, I take it, come from paucity of materials. A test which I began to make as a study in style has helped me in estimating the solidity of a writer. Washington Irving formed his style by reading attentively from time to time a page of Addison and then, closing the book, endeavored to write out the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... in the hills, some two hundred fifty feet high, but none of us dared to make the point that gives an entire view of it. All we could see added proof of our paucity of words to express our surprise that the reputed great wonders of this "Proud" were really true. On returning we were often obliged to alight and walk over fallen boulders, this being the first trip after the extreme ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... the latter! Take up the "Constitutionnel," or "Journal des Debats" at Paris, and then look at the broad double sheets of the "Times" and other morning papers, with the columns of information and original matter which they contain. Compare the flimsy sheets, bad printing, and general paucity of information of the continental daily press, with the clear types, rapid steam power called into action, the outlay, enormous expenditure, and rapid information obtained by our leading journals ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... punished with death. The position of the former officials removed from Macedonia was, in all probability, similar. This expedient, violent as it was, was still, as things stood, the most lenient, and the enraged Greeks of the Roman party were far from content with the paucity of the executions. Lyciscus had accordingly deemed it proper, by way of preliminary, to have 500 of the leading men of the Aetolian patriotic party slain at the meeting of the diet; the Roman commission, which needed the man, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and the effects of the inundation upon the soil of Egypt—Paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus; the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dom-palms—The fauna: the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus and the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... you'll soon invention find And not to cunning tricks and freaks be blind; The youngest 'prentice, when he feels the dart, Grows wondrous shrewd, and studies wily art. This passion never, we perceive, remains In want from paucity of scheming brains. The god of hearts so well exerts his force, That he receives his dues as things of course. A bucking-tub, of which a tale is told, Will prove the case, and this I'll now unfold; Particulars I heard some days ago, From one who ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... us, the descendants of an old and polished civilization, more than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but little wonder that, excited by our past successes, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... streams. Elevated spots show us the ruins of old stone towers, once a part of some feudal stronghold, but the eye seeks in vain for well-wooded slopes, thrifty groves, or cultivated fields with promising crops. While the more practical traveller realizes a sense of disappointment at the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the artist will find enough to delight the eye and to fire the imagination in Spain. The ever-transparent atmosphere, and the lovely cloud-effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will hallow the desolate regions ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... stage dancing within the last generation has been very pronounced, yet so gradual has been this growth and improvement, that only the elders of the present time can visualize its progress, and that only by a backward look to the period of paucity and monotony that ruled in their junior years, and contrast the dearth of then with ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... about, and one was caught on shore during our stay by a party of natives. The variety of fishes caught at this anchorage was considerable, and furnished many additions to the ichthyological collection, to which the paucity of other objects in zoology for some time back enabled me to bestow much attention.* Among the genera most remarkable for singularity of form and brilliancy of colouring I may mention Holocentrum, five kinds ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... had a population of 750—and the Catawbas, on the Catawba river in South Carolina with only 150 persons. These latter were remarkably adventurous, enterprising and courageous; and notwithstanding their remote situation, and the paucity of their numbers, frequently traversed the valley of Virginia, and even penetrated the country on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and between the Ohio river and lake Erie, to wage war upon the Delawares. Their success in many of these expeditions, is preserved in the traditions ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... water with violence, so as to scare the fish, which thus become an easy prey; a fact which was, I believe, first indicated by Pallas, during his residence on the banks of the Caspian Sea. Shells are scarce, and consist of a few small bivalves; their comparative absence is probably due to the paucity of limestone in the mountains whence the many feeders flow. The sand is pure white and small-grained, with fragments of hornblende and mica, the latter varying in abundance as a feeder is near or far away. Pink sand* [I have seen the same garnet sand covering the bottom ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the compiler, among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket Dictionary," felt this severely—he himself experienced no abatement of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the age of eighty;—but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is the youth, and such the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... science of ventilation being of recent introduction. Even in large establishments all the living-rooms are almost always on the ground-floor, both on account of the fatigue of going up and down stairs, and owing to the paucity of servants. As a rule, the kitchens are terribly small, and in summer filled with flies. How the poor servants manage to exist in them is more than I can understand. It is no wonder they ask such high wages. In a few larger houses a merciful fashion has been adopted of making the kitchen a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... on earth, and among such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... is whatever is of advantage to the desiring person, an object of aversion whatever is of disadvantage; with both one person enters into relation by turns. On account of the comparative paucity of the objects of desire, and the comparative multitude of the objects of aversion, both may be comprised under the general term, 'object of aversion.' Now, these objects of aversion we mean when we use the term 'causes ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... never talked much to me about religion; but when he did, it was with such evident awe in his spirit, and reverence in his demeanor, as had more effect on me, I am certain, from the very paucity of the words in which his meaning found utterance. Another thing which had still more influence upon me was, that, waking one night after I had been asleep for some time, I saw him on his knees by my bedside. I ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... spots. If the Argonauts, those hardy adventurers who flung their gold round so regardlessly and were not satisfied unless they paid outrageously big prices for everything, could come back today they would have no cause to complain at the contemptible paucity of the bill after they had dined at any one of half a dozen ultra-expensive hotels that are to be found dotted ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... his imitative turn, that he himself could preach by the hour, in the manner—so far at least as voice and gesture went—of all the popular ministers of the district. There was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his discourses: in his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic—"The wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked!" while a passage of a less depreciatory character served ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller



Words linked to "Paucity" :   scarceness, scarcity



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