scarce
Americanadjective
-
scarcer,
comparative
-
scarcest
superlative
-
insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant.
Meat and butter were scarce during the war.
- Synonyms:
- deficient
- Antonyms:
- abundant
-
seldom met with; rare.
a scarce book.
- Synonyms:
- infrequent, uncommon
adverb
idioms
adjective
-
rarely encountered
-
insufficient to meet the demand
-
informal to go away, esp suddenly
adverb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of scarce
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English scars, from Old North French (e)scars, from Vulgar Latin excarpsus (unrecorded) “plucked out,” from Latin excerptus; see excerpt
Explanation
If something is scarce, there isn't much of it around. Crops are scarce after a long drought, or you might find babysitters scarce if your kids are a nightmare to watch. Scarce, meaning “restricted in quantity,” can oddly be traced back to the same Latin word that spawned the word "excerpt." Use the word scarce when you want to say that something is hard to find or practically missing. When you know you’re about to be asked to do something unpleasant, like wash the dishes or take out the trash, go ahead and “make yourself scarce,” which means to be elusive or get out of there fast.
Vocabulary lists containing scarce
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Today, surviving examples are "exceptionally scarce", according to antique shop WeBuyVintage, which has valued the item at £2,500.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Child-care nonprofits are taking advantage of declining enrollment at TK-12 schools to turn vacant classrooms and even closed campuses into child-care hubs, expanding scarce infant and toddler slots.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
Now, however, climate change has turned water into a scarce resource, requiring a shift in thinking, Schneider argued.
From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026
Rosenblatt Securities analyst John McPeake wrote that with artificial-intelligence computing power being so scarce, he expected that CoreWeave would be able to capitalize.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026
Slumped by the fire, in the midst of all of that shouting, was Dr. Trefusis, insensate, shivering though near flame, stubble upon his cheeks and chin, his scarce hair still clammy.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Drastic restrictions on cross-country travel took effect Thursday in cash-strapped Cuba, with spaces on ever scarcer trains and buses now reserved for the sick, people traveling for funerals and other emergencies.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
The right response is more production and more productivity growth, not scarcer credit.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 6, 2026
Since early March, diesel prices here have risen sharply, inbound freight costs have spiked, and fertilizer—roughly a third of globally traded supply normally transits the strait—has become scarcer and dramatically more expensive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 7, 2026
By the time the next crew swapped with his that afternoon, they were scarcer: “One every 30 minutes, roughly,” Ulibarri recalled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2026
Times hadn't been great, but now food and money were scarcer than before.
From "Life Is So Good" by George Dawson
But periodically investors get a reminder that one of the scarcest AI resources is top talent.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 20, 2026
Hatakeyama compares this to an updated version of Liebig's famous barrel analogy, in which a plant's growth is limited by its shortest stave, representing the scarcest resource.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 11, 2025
The scarcest resource in the AI arms race is access to computing, which is why OpenAI and others are pledging to spend trillions of dollars in the coming years to make sure the capacity expands.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2025
It can also have the most significant impact on water levels, as it happens at the time of year when water is scarcest.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2022
In Osborne's Catalogue for 1751, the Toledo Missal, described as the scarcest volume in the world, was valued only at £35.
From The Book-Collector A General Survey of the Pursuit and of those who have engaged in it at Home and Abroad from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by William Carew Hazlitt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
