scanty
Syllables: scan·ty/ˈskænti/
scanty adjective: somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.
Adjective
scanty (comparative scantier, superlative scantiest)
- Somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.
- A girl dressed in scanty clothing
- To share, with ill-concealed disdain, / Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain.1810, Walter Scott, “Canto VI. The Guard-room.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and...
- Synonyms:
- skimpy
- Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious; stingy.
- In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words.1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, […], 2nd edition, London: […] John Clark and Richard Hett, […], Emanuel Matthews, […], and Richard Ford, […]...
- Revealing.
- Synonyms:
- brief
scanty meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
scanty in Urdu
- کم, ناکافی, قلیل, تھوڑا
scanty in Bengali
- অল্প, অপর্যাপ্ত, নগণ্য
scanty in Malayalam
- scant, meagre, minimal
- കഷ്ടിയായ, അഭൂരി, അഭൃശ, അല്പമാത്രമായ, ദരിദ്രമായ, കുറവായ
- revealing, skimpy, short
- അല്പമാത്രമായ, കഷ്ടിച്ചെത്തുന്ന, കുറിയ, അപര്യാപ്തമായ, വേണ്ടത്ര ഇല്ലാത്ത, ആവശ്യത്തിനു മതിയാകാത്ത
scanty in Kannada
- ಸಣ್ಣ ಗಾತ್ರದ, ಸಾಕೂ ಸಾಲದಂಥ, ಸಾಕಾಗದ, ಕಡಿಮೆಯಾದ, ರವಷ್ಟು, ಅಲ್ಪ
Examples of scanty in a sentence
- Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 5, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865...
- His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur.1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Sisters”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 16:
- How scanty are the records of great men in India!1921, Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, volume 1:
Synonyms of scanty
Forms of scanty
| comparative | scantier |
|---|---|
| superlative | scantiest |
Origin of scanty
From scant + -y.
Words formed from scanty
Words that rhyme with scanty
Questions about scanty
- What does scanty mean?
- Scanty means somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.
- What is scanty in Urdu?
- Scanty in Urdu is کم, ناکافی, قلیل. See Scanty meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use scanty in a sentence?
- Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.
- What part of speech is scanty?
- Scanty is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce scanty?
- Scanty is pronounced /ˈskænti/.
Words near scanty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scanty (page history and authors); scanty (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scanty (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scanty (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scanty (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-scanty.ogg.
Cite this entry: “scanty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scanty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.