Word.ws English Dictionary

scant

/skænt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/skant/

scant adjective: not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; scanty; meager.

Adjective

scant (comparative scanter, superlative scantest)

  1. Not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; scanty; meager.
    • 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.1824, John Watkins, Life of Hugh Latimer
    Synonyms:
    sparse, spare, geason
  2. Sparing; parsimonious; chary.
    • Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  3. Slightly diminished; just short of the amount described.
    • a scant cup of sugar

Verb

scant (third-person singular simple present scants, present participle scanting, simple past and past participle scanted)

  1. (transitive) To limit in amount or share; to stint.
    • to scant someone in provisions; to scant ourselves in the use of necessaries
    • Scant not my cups.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  2. (intransitive) To fail, or become less; to scantle.
    • The wind scants.

Determiner

scant

  1. Very little, very few.
    • After his previous escapades, Mary had scant reason to believe John.
    • (as pronoun) The failure of this project has scant to do with me.
    Synonyms:
    little, few, slight

Noun

scant (plural scants)

  1. A small piece or quantity.
    • A blonde appeared from the officers' room, wearing a scant of material that passed for issued undergarments.2020, Nathaniel DeZago, Cries of Battle: Selstra
  2. (uncommon) Scarcity; lack.
    • As soon as the corpse was placed on the pile, and some prayers muttered by the attendant Bramin, fire was set to it at one of the corners, and the wood being dry, and in great quantity, it soon blazed up and consumed the body to ashes, without any noisome smell, such as however does not...1757, John-Henry Grose, A voyage to the East-Indies, with observations on various parts there, page 360
    • I was greatly surprised, however, in this very fertile and abundant country, to find so great a scant of provisions in the inns.1831, Derwent Conway, Switzerland, the South of France and the Pyrenees, page 224
  3. A block of stone sawn on two sides down to the bed level.
  4. A sheet of stone.
  5. (wood) A slightly thinner measurement of a standard wood size.

Adverb

scant (not comparable)

  1. (dated, uncommon) With difficulty; scarcely; hardly.
    • [A]ske a Stoicke vvhich Philoſophy is true, he vvil preferre his ovvne. Then aske him vvhich approacheth next the truth, he vvill confeſſe the Academiques. So deale vvith the Epicure, that vvill ſcant indure the Stoicke to be in ſight of him, ſo ſoone as he hath placed himſelfe, he vvill place the...1597, Francis [Bacon], “Of the Colours of Good and Evill, a Fragment”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland […], published 1632, →OCLC
    • So weak that he was scant able to go down the stairs.1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)

scant meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

scant in Tamil

பற்றாக்குறைவான, போதாத, மிகக்குறைவான

scant in Urdu

کم, ناکافی, قاصر, قلیل, کمی, قلت

scant in Malayalam

minimal, little, little or no
വിരളം, കുറവായ, ദുർല്ലഭമായ, സ്വല്പമായ, തുച്ഛമായ, ലഘുവായ

scant in Kannada

scant
ತೆಳು teḷu
More languagesFewer languages
scant in Thai
อันน้อยนิด

Examples of scant in a sentence

  • Another major defect of the current literature dealing with the nomenclature of hybrid forms of English is the scant attention paid to the question of frequency.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 4:
  • [Montana Senator Steve] Daines isn’t the only example of right-wing politicians who wish to wield anti-Semitism as a convenient cudgel against their political enemies, with scant if any evidence.2019 July 17, Talia Lavin, “When Non-Jews Wield Anti-Semitism as Political Shield”, in GQ, archived from the original on 13 Mar 2021:
  • The mainstream media hones in on bad news stories where UK railways are concerned, yet gives scant attention to the many items of good news emerging from the network.2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Aylesbury (2009)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 61:
  • where man hath a great living laid together and where he is scanted1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Building”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:

All 33 example sentences with scant

Synonyms of scant

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of scant

Forms of scant

Adjective
comparativescanter
superlativescantest
Verb
third-person singular presentscants
present participlescanting
past participlescanted
pastscanted
Noun
pluralscants

Origin of scant

Adjective and determiner from Middle English scant, from Old Norse skamt, neuter of skammr (“short”), from Proto-Germanic *skammaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱem- (“mutilated, hornless”). Verb from Middle English scanten, from the adjective. Noun and adverb from Middle English scant, from the adjective.

Words formed from scant

Words that rhyme with scant

18 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about scant

What does scant mean?
Scant means not full, large, or plentiful; scarcely sufficient; scanty; meager.
What is scant in Tamil?
Scant in Tamil is பற்றாக்குறைவான, போதாத, மிகக்குறைவான. See Scant meaning in Tamil.
How do you use scant in a sentence?
Another major defect of the current literature dealing with the nomenclature of hybrid forms of English is the scant attention paid to the question of frequency.
What part of speech is scant?
Scant can be an adjective, a verb, a determiner or a noun.
How do you pronounce scant?
Scant is pronounced /skænt/ (UK).

Words near scant in the dictionary

  1. scansoriopterigids
  2. scansoriopterygid
  3. scansoriopterygids
  4. scansorious
  5. scansorius
  6. scant
  7. scante
  8. scanted
  9. scanter
  10. scantest
  11. Scanticook

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scant (page history and authors); scant (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scant (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scant (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); ತೆಳು (Kannada) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-scant.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-scant.wav.

Cite this entry: “scant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.