Sparsely

How to spell sparsely

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sparsely

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sparsely mean?

1. adverbIn a thinly scattered or scant way; with few items spread over an area.

Sparsely in a sentence

• The remote valley is sparsely populated, with only a handful of farms.

• The report was sparsely illustrated, relying mostly on plain text.

Where does sparsely come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adverb is built on the adjective 'sparse', which English took directly from the Latin sparsus, the past participle of the verb spargere, meaning 'to scatter, strew, or sprinkle'. In Latin, something sparsus had been spread thinly or dotted about rather than gathered in a mass, and that core idea of thin scattering carried straight into English when 'sparse' appeared in the 1600s. Adding the ordinary adverb suffix '-ly' to the adjective gives 'sparsely', describing how thinly or scatteredly something is distributed. The same spargere root quietly survives in words like 'disperse' (to scatter apart) and 'aspersion' (originally a sprinkling, as of accusations). The spelling stays neat because '-ly' simply attaches to the complete adjective 'sparse', so the silent 'e' is kept.

How the word is built

• spars- (from Latin sparsus: scattered)
• -e (adjective ending)
• -ly (adverb suffix)