Meaning of scarce in English

scarce

adjective

/skeəs/ us

/skers/

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not easy to find or get:

Food and clean water were becoming scarce.

scarce resources

Opposites

abundant formal
copious
plentiful

More examplesFewer examples

With jobs so scarce, many young people have nothing to do.
In wartime, food is often scarce.
Research evidence in this area is scarce.
scarce water resources
Details are still scarce.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Scarce, inadequate and not enough

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Idiom

make yourself scarce

scarce

adverb

literary old-fashioned

/skeəs/ us

/skers/

almost not:

I could scarce believe my eyes.

Synonyms

barely
hardly
just 
scarcely

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Merely and barely

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(Definition of scarce from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

scarce | American Dictionary

scarce

adjective [ -er/-est only ]

/skeərs/

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not available in necessary amounts, or rare:

Jobs are scarce.

(Definition of scarce from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

scarce | Business English

scarce

adjective

/skeəs/ us

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not easy to find or get:

Jobs are scarce around here.

This is a huge waste of scarce resources.

make yourself scarce informal

to go away from a difficult situation in order to avoid trouble:

Things were going badly at the meeting, so he made himself scarce.

(Definition of scarce from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of scarce

scarce

Sea barley is a scarcer species of this habitat.

From

Wikipedia

This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.

In this scenario, competitive pressures between organizations are already high, and many organizations are already directly competing for scarce resources.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

According to classical trade theory, factors of production should migrate from where they are relatively plentiful to where they are relatively scarce.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The data on family life in these entries is scarce and inconsistent, and they should be excluded from the analysis.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Presumably, 'small ' needs for care are handled primarily by the family, probably more so when services are scarce.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Multiple infections are generally scarce and patchy in spatial distribution.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Departmental managers are required to address the needs of the patient and the complex requirements of the service, whilst being accountable for scarce resources.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Intuitively, one would expect that a new source of biomass would be most demanded where biomass is scarce.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The scarce gold equilibrium encourages the use of bank-issued bills of exchange in gold as an alternative to trade in gold.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The employees who worked in state ®rms and shops, and who had access to scarce goods, fuelled the black market.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Moroever, this would provide a framework within which scarce investment resources could be directed with more discerning priorities to infrastructural improvement.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

How far did professional pharmacists and veterinary specialists, as well as medical students, substitute for trained physicians when these were scarce or absent ?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Multiple roles may nevertheless influence psychological distress among particular subgroups, for example those with scarce resources such as lone parents or those on low incomes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Under the blistering heat, the long marches could be exhausting and water was a scarce commodity.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Selecting candidates for liver transplantation: a medical ethics perspective on the allocation of a scarce and rationed resource.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of scarce?

Translations of scarce

in Chinese (Traditional)

難得的，稀有的，罕見的, 幾乎沒有…

Meaning of scarce in English

Idiom

scarce | American Dictionary

scarce | Business English

Examples of scarce

Translations of scarce

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