Adjective Food was in scant supply. She paid scant attention to the facts. Police found scant evidence of fraud. Verb don't scant the peanut butter on those sandwiches!
Recent Examples on the Web
Adjective
Details are scant, but the title, Blade Runner 2099, hints at a story set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve's Harrison Ford-Ryan Gosling vehicle. Stephanie Mlot, PCMAG, 16 Sep. 2022 Details are scant, but rangers with the National Park Service reported the skeletal remains were found around 8 p.m. Monday at the lake’s Swim Beach. Nathan Solis, Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2022 Polling is scant, but interest in the referendum appears high. Annie Gowen, Washington Post, 2 Aug. 2022 New business development and home construction are scant. Joseph De Avila, WSJ, 19 June 2022 The stories Caminiti told in rehab, though the patients re-telling them are scant on particulars after all these years, were confirmed in the book by Caminiti’s attorney Terry Yates, who didn’t go into detail because of attorney-client privilege. Matt Young, Chron, 10 May 2022 While details are scant, the new shots contain two major changes. Madison Muller, BostonGlobe.com, 14 Aug. 2022 Per usual with Fargo, character details are scant at the moment. Rick Porter, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Aug. 2022 Information about how Jynneos performs in people with H.I.V., particularly in those with severe immune problems, was already scant.New York Times, 5 Aug. 2022
Adverb
How come scant few of America’s leading art museums own or display his work? Chadd Scott, Forbes, 30 May 2021
Verb
There were few roads or trails or even paths to follow and scant potable water, but plenty of pit vipers and tarantulas. Ellen Ruppel Shell, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2022 In most cases, the Electoral College vote is a mere formality that carries no drama and garners scant public attention. Gilbert Garcia, ExpressNews.com, 18 Dec. 2020 Bennett’s story began in southern Georgia’s rural Brantley County, home to scant football tradition when the Bennetts arrived from the Atlanta suburbs in 2004. Laine Higgins And Rachel Bachman, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020 Yet geriatrics is badly scanted in standard medical training. Joseph Epstein, WSJ, 17 Jan. 2020 Issues that involve race — such as voting-rights cases and challenges to affirmative action in higher education — receive extensive treatment, while other, no less interesting and important questions are scanted or ignored. Carson Holloway, National Review, 20 June 2019 Foxhall’s history of migraine, unlike the self-help books, accommodates human complexity without scanting medicine’s contributions to a condition that affects roughly 1 in 7 people on our planet. Sibbie O'sullivan, Washington Post, 10 June 2019 Yet, in his close attention to what the men inside the White House thought and did, Zeitz scants the larger reasons for their success and eventual downfall. Michael Kazin, The New Republic, 27 Feb. 2018 Hospitals and heroic interventions got the large investments; incrementalists were scanted. Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2017 See More
Word History
Etymology
Adjective
Middle English, from Old Norse skamt, neuter of skammr short