sparsely
Americanadverb
-
in a thinly distributed way; not thickly or densely.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is very sparsely populated, as more than 90% of it is forested.
-
in a scanty or meager way.
It was a large kitchen, but very sparsely equipped for cooking.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of sparsely
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.
Highland Council said its region, which has large, sparsely populated areas, offered stargazers some of the darkest skies in Europe.
From BBC • May 28, 2026
Levy plays Nicky, a pastor at a sparsely attended suburban New Jersey church of no evident denomination.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 15, 2026
Amazon is building delivery hubs across sparsely populated parts of the U.S. to cut shipping times to about two days, a big improvement for rural customers used to waiting up to a week.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 22, 2026
In the sparsely populated Kuiper Belt, these distant bodies drift with relatively few collisions, allowing fragile structures to survive.
From Science Daily • Feb. 23, 2026
He had walked into a poor, mountainous, and sparsely populated part of China’s Jilin Province.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
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.
