scarceとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English scarce, skarce, scarse, scars, from Old Northern French scars, escars ("sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor"; > French échars, Medieval Latin scarsus (“diminished, reduced”)), of uncertain origin. One theory is that it derives originally from a Late Latin *scarpsus, *excarpsus, a participle form of *excarpere (“take out”), from Latin ex- + carpere; yet the sense evolution is difficult to trace. Compare also Middle Dutch schaers (“sparing, niggard”), Middle Dutch schaers (“a pair of shears, plowshare”), scheeren (“to shear”).

発音

• (Received 発音) IPA^(key): /ˈskɛəs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈskɛɚs/

形容詞

scarce (comparative scarcer, superlative scarcest)

1. Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
   • (Can we date this quote by John Locke かつ provide title, author's full name, かつ other details?)

     You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen one fifth in value.

   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 3, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.

2. (archaic) Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 3”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

     a region scarce of prey

同意語

• (まれに, まれに): geason, infrequent, raresome; see also Thesaurus:rare

派生語

関連する語

• scarcity

副詞

scarce (not comparable)

1. (now literary, archaic) Scarcely, only just.
   • 1645, John Milton, An Epitaph on the marchioness of Winchester:

     With a scarce well-lighted flame.

   • 1854, Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven:

     And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure that I heard you [...].

   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet Chapter 4:

     Yet had I scarce set foot in the passage when I stopped, remembering how once already this same evening I had played the coward, and run home scared with my own fears.

   • 1906, Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman:

     He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

     But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand

     As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

     And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

     (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)

   • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage 1993, p. 122:

     Upon the barred and slitted wall the splotched shadow of the heaven tree shuddered and pulsed monstrously in scarce any wind.

   • 1969, John Cleese, Monty Python's Flying Circus:

     Well, it's scarce the replacement then, is it?

アナグラム

• Craces, arcsec