Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Barely sufficient.
- adjective Falling short of a specific measure.
- adjective Inadequately supplied; short.
- transitive verb To give an inadequate portion or allowance to.
- transitive verb To limit, as in amount or share; stint.
- transitive verb To deal with or treat inadequately or neglectfully; slight.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Short in quantity; scarcely sufficient; rather less than is wanted for the purpose; not enough; scanty: as, a scant allowance of provisions or water; a scant piece of cloth for a garment.
- Sparing; parsimonious; chary.
- Having a limited or scanty supply; scarce; short: with of.
- Nautical, of the wind, coming from a direction such that a ship will barely lie her course even when close-hauled.
- noun Scarcity; scantiness; lack.
- To put on scant allowance; limit; stint: as, to
scant one in provisions or necessaries. - To make small or scanty; diminish; cut short or down.
- To be niggard or sparing of; begrudge; keep back.
- Nautical, of the wind, to become less favorable; blow in such a direction as to hinder a vessel from continuing on her course even when close-hauled.
- Scarcely; hardly.
- Scantily; sparingly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; less than is wanted for the purpose; scanty; meager; not enough.
- adjective Sparing; parsimonious; chary.
- intransitive verb To fail, or become less; to scantle.
- transitive verb To limit; to straiten; to treat illiberally; to stint.
- transitive verb To cut short; to make small, narrow, or scanty; to curtail.
- adverb obsolete In a scant manner; with difficulty; scarcely; hardly.
- noun rare Scantness; scarcity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective very little, very few
- verb To
limit inamount orshare ; tostint . - noun masonry A block of stone sawn on two sides down to the bed level.
- noun masonry A
sheet of stone. - noun wood A slightly thinner measurement of a standard wood size.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb work hastily or carelessly; deal with inadequately and superficially
- verb limit in quality or quantity
- verb supply sparingly and with restricted quantities
- adjective less than the correct or legal or full amount often deliberately so
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Apple refuses to use Ogg Theora in Safari because of what it calls scant hardware support and an "uncertain patent landscape."
The Register Team Register 2010
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Got to Thomas Paine park at about 7pm; only 20 or so people there …. at about 8pm a few marketing people started handing out really cool T-shirts, stickers, Gotham Newspapers and Keychains to a frenzied crowd of about 300; then a couple of guys showed up randomly in scant Batman attire; fitting to say the least ….
Citizens For Batman Unite - New York and Chicago Meet-Ups! « FirstShowing.net 2008
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But scant is robust evidence at early developmental stages for a lower dN/dS ratio.
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They've been around since before World War II, but their use on sporting rifles has always been limited to custom guns, and then in scant numbers.
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He heard Emily scream his name a scant second before the darkness claimed him.
The Clayborne Brides Julie Garwood 2010
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He heard Emily scream his name a scant second before the darkness claimed him.
One Pink Rose Julie Garwood 2010
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No parents, no brothers or sisters and forbidden even to call her scant-remaining relative fondly.
Dearly Beloved 2010
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Our country was not a nation of what may be called scant rainfall.
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The space is scant enough for all that is told in it; scant, that is to say, in comparison with the space of the story of Beowulf; though whether the poem loses, as poetry, by this compression is another matter.
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(To avoid the repetition of few the affected word scant has been admitted)
Style. 1908
travismcdermott commented on the word scant
1436 Pol. Poems (Rolls) II. 189 Allas! fortune begynneth so to stant read scant?, Or ellis grace, that dede is governaunce.
June 24, 2008
yarb commented on the word scant
...I am dying (Carcinoma ventriculi) but the Holocene is of scant importance.
- Peter Reading, C, 1984
August 2, 2008