sparsity
Americannoun
-
the fact or condition of being thinly scattered or distributed and not thick or dense.
The size of these rural counties and the sparsity of their populations make it more costly to administer social services.
-
the fact or quality of being small in amount or number; scantiness.
Not only is there a sparsity of rainfall in extremely arid deserts, but high evaporation rates soon remove whatever moisture it provides.
Other Word Forms
- unsparseness noun
Etymology
Origin of sparsity
First recorded in 1860–65; spars(e) ( def. ) + -ity ( def. )
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.
Mr. Jones heightens the sense of unease with a style that favors sparsity and acoustic alertness.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025
The GP-to-patient ratio already trails the national average by 18%, it added, with recruitment hampered by "confusion around funding, poor estates and a sparsity of applications".
From BBC • Nov. 22, 2023
In the future, she and her collaborators want to apply hierarchical structured sparsity to more types of machine-learning models and different types of tensors in the models.
From Science Daily • Oct. 31, 2023
Military experts say the Ukrainians’ rate of shooting down missiles is good, especially given the age and sparsity of Ukraine’s equipment.
From New York Times • Oct. 11, 2022
Yet in spite of the sparsity of settlement the native runner manages to find you, even after days of traveling, without compass or directions to aid him.
From In Africa Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country by McCutcheon, John T.
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.
