scanty

comparative scantier · superlative scantiest

1. Somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.

   A girl dressed in scanty clothing

   5 more examples

   To share, with ill-concealed disdain, / Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain.

   1810, Walter Scott, “Canto VI. The Guard-room.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, →OCLC, stanza III

   […]and we cannot but regret that the imperfect morality of those days, which saw glory in the valour of freemen, rebellion only in that of slaves, should have left us but frigid and scanty accounts of so obstinate a siege.

   1837, Edward Lytton Bulwer [i.e., Edward Bulwer-Lytton], Athens: Its Rise and Fall: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Saunders and Otley, […], →OCLC

   Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.

   1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 5, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC

   His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur.

   1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 16

   How scanty are the records of great men in India!

   1921, Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, volume 1

   Synonyms: skimpy

2. Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious; stingy.

   In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words.

   1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, […], 2nd edition, London: […] John Clark and Richard Hett, […], Emanuel Matthews, […], and Richard Ford, […], published 1726, →OCLC

3. Revealing.

   Synonyms: brief