Scarce

How to spell scarce

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scarce

What does scarce mean?

1. adjectiveAvailable only in small amounts; insufficient for the demand or rare to find.

Scarce in a sentence

• Clean drinking water became scarce during the long drought.

• Affordable housing is scarce in most large cities.

Where does scarce come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English in the 1200s from the Old French escars or scars, which meant 'sparing', 'stingy', or 'in short supply'. That French form traces back to the Vulgar Latin excarpsus, a contracted past participle of excerpere, meaning 'to pluck out' or 'to select', from ex 'out' and carpere 'to pick or gather'. The underlying idea was that something carefully picked over and reduced was left thin on the ground, which shaded naturally into the sense of being rare or insufficient. The same carpere root sits behind the English word 'excerpt' and the familiar phrase 'carpe diem' (seize the day). The spelling trap is the soft 'c' followed by the final 'ce', since the word sounds as though it could end in 'ss', so writers must remember the single 'c' doing double duty and the silent-feeling 'e' on the end.

How the word is built

• scarce (from Old French escars: sparing, scanty); no productive prefix or suffix in modern English