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What is "scant"

Crossword clues for scant

scant
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
scant
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
scant regard (=very little regard)
▪ Should we be exporting arms to countries with scant regard for human rights?
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
attention
▪ It is clear, however, that Beveridge paid scant attention to these wider issues.
▪ But they predicted that until the disease entered the mainstream population, it would receive scant attention.
▪ It was found that scant attention had been paid to raising the cultural level of party members.
▪ The Civil Rights Division also gave scant attention to police abuse of black citizens.
▪ But even the much richer Soviet collections issued in the twenties were given scant attention in the West.
▪ Economic concerns received relatively scant attention.
▪ Feminists have, until recently, paid scant attention to their older sisters but this is now being remedied.
▪ They pay scant attention to the facts, rarely being bothered to research them or substantiate them.
evidence
▪ However, there is so far only scant evidence to support this hypothesis.
▪ Assumptions concerning this subject abound, but many of these assumptions are based on scant evidence.
▪ In the judgment of the civil authorities, there is scant evidence against you and even less space for holding you.
▪ Nothing else about metempsychosis follows, given the slight and scant evidence.
▪ There is scant evidence of reconciliation in that room.
regard
▪ Other criticisms of the Ridley ruling appear to show scant regard for the integrity of the retailer or its competitiveness.
▪ Wall Street is notorious for having scant regard for the future and even less for the past.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Many people in the U.S. give scant attention to European affairs.
▪ We had scant time to rehearse.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But even the much richer Soviet collections issued in the twenties were given scant attention in the West.
▪ He was finding scant peace in his own home these days.
▪ Outside, bigger, rougher rocks were piled up to the eaves, with scant little chinks left for doorways and windows.
▪ The plot of Raving Beauties is almost as scant as the girls' costumes.
▪ They have no idea of amenity, no regard for landscape and have scant interest in problems of drainage and water.
▪ While most mistakes should be ignored or given scant acknowledgement, there are times when parental intervention may be useful.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Scant

Scant \Scant\, a. [Compar. Scanter; superl. Scantest.] [Icel. skamt, neuter of skamr, skammr, short; cf. skamta to dole out, to portion.]

  1. Not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; less than is wanted for the purpose; scanty; meager; not enough; as, a scant allowance of provisions or water; a scant pattern of cloth for a garment.

    His sermon was scant, in all, a quarter of an hour.
    --Ridley.

  2. Sparing; parsimonious; chary.

    Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.
    --Shak.

    Syn: See under Scanty.

Scant

Scant \Scant\, n. Scantness; scarcity. [R.]
--T. Carew.

Scant

Scant \Scant\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Scanted; p. pr. & vb. n. Scanting.]

  1. To limit; to straiten; to treat illiberally; to stint; as, to scant one in provisions; to scant ourselves in the use of necessaries.

    Where a man hath a great living laid together and where he is scanted.
    --Bacon.

    I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on your actions.
    --Dryden.

  2. To cut short; to make small, narrow, or scanty; to curtail. ``Scant not my cups.''
    --Shak.

Scant

Scant \Scant\, adv. In a scant manner; with difficulty; scarcely; hardly. [Obs.]
--Bacon.

So weak that he was scant able to go down the stairs.
--Fuller.

Scant

Scant \Scant\, v. i. To fail, or become less; to scantle; as, the wind scants.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
scant

mid-14c., from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse skamt, neuter of skammr "short, brief," from Proto-Germanic *skamma- (cognates: Old English scamm "short," Old High German skemmen "to shorten"), perhaps ultimately "hornless," from PIE *kem- (see hind (n.)). Also in Middle English as a noun, "scant supply, scarcity," from Old Norse. As a verb and adverb from mid-15c.

Wiktionary
scant

  1. 1 Very little, very few. 2 Not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; scanty; meager; not enough. 3 Sparing; parsimonious; chary. adv. With difficulty; scarcely; hardly. n. 1 (context masonry English) A block of stone sawn on two sides down to the bed level. 2 (context masonry English) A sheet of stone. 3 (context wood English) A slightly thinner measurement of a standard wood size. v

  2. 1 (context transitive English) To limit in amount or share; to stint. 2 (context intransitive English) To fail, or become less; to scantle.

WordNet
scant

adj. less than the correct or legal or full amount often deliberately so; "a light pound"; "a scant cup of sugar"; "regularly gives short weight" [syn: light, scant(p), short]

scant

  1. v. work hastily or carelessly; deal with inadequately and superficially [syn: skimp]

  2. limit in quality or quantity [syn: skimp]

  3. supply sparingly and with restricted quantities; "sting with the allowance" [syn: stint, skimp]

Usage examples of "scant".

Turning on his heel he made a rapid dive for the batwing doors of the saloon, beating Wardle to them by a scant half second.

Some duke, out of gratitude for a forgotten favor, had paid for a clock tower to be built at the Citadel of Wizards, complete with a handsome horologe to which most mages paid scant attention.

Scant comfort to Caesar and Aurelia, who mourned her sadly changed circumstances.

The servant who could outwit or outgeneral her did not exist, and the servant who was not afraid of her lasted scant days.

Genley gathered himself up from his rock with the few fish he had speared and came hurrying in, splashing across the shallows and hastening alongside the scant cultivation Parm Tower afforded.

When Mac inquired whether he knew his daughter, or had any idea where she might be, Peabody introduced himself in such a way that the Scotsman felt he was supposed to know who he was, and then proceeded to pass on what scant information he had and to give his opinion in a pompously forceful manner.

Hawkril closed a numbing grip on a leather-clad shoulder, plucked the procurer bodily off his feet, and ran him back along the passage scant instants before a chunk of wall as large as a coach bounced out of the cloud of destruction and tumbled ponderously toward them, shedding blocks as large as their bodies as it came.

There was scant mention of treatment plans, prognoses, stress histories--anything that could be considered medically or psychologically relevant.

He was a short, pursy man, normally scant of breath, but for the last five years he had walked these tops on his daily occupations, and so friendly and kindly had they come to seem to him that he did not realise any arduousness in surmounting them.

The Quirt ranch was almost surrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort or another, though there was scant grazing in the early spring on the sagebrush wilderness to the south.

Much politicking, reallocation of scant resources, then, this pitifully inadequate mission.

This is the eastern quarter, the oldest human settlement on Tropicana, where the palm-thatched bungalows cluster scant metres above the white sands of Almond Beach.

There was at any rate nothing scant either in her admissions or her perversions, the mixture of her fear of what Maisie might undiscoverably think and of the support she at the same time gathered from a necessity of selfishness and a habit of brutality.

Sensing his reluctance, Sharana unfixed the clasp that held her scant robe in place and let it fall open.

In the few scant stretches of unshelved wall, niches held statues and a few ignored curios forlorn in polished glass cases.