scant
/skant
/adjective
1Barely sufficient or adequate: companies with scant regard for the safety of future generations...
- This mainstream inward-investment effort paid scant attention to financial services or any other part of the non-manufacturing side of business.
- So far they've paid scant attention to the rebel's scheme.
- But of course it's there in the small print, and it's paid scant attention to.
Synonyms
little, little or no, minimal, hardly any, limited, negligible, barely sufficient, meagre;
insufficient, too little, not enough, inadequate, deficient
rare exiguous
1.1 [attributive] Barely amounting to a specified number or quantity: she weighed a scant two pounds...
- At 16 years old and a scant 118 pounds, Swan was a stick figure, to say the least.
- Hardly wearing out its welcome at a scant 50 minutes, the feature is accompanied by the shorts Intent, Strap 'Em Down!
verb [with object] chiefly North American
1Provide grudgingly or in insufficient amounts: he does not scant his attention to the later writings
1.1Deal with inadequately; neglect: the press regularly scants a host of issues relating to safety and health...
- In one way or another, all these moves in its backyard overrode or scanted EU sensibilities.
- It should also be noted that the bottom of the socio-economic distribution is scanted in these data because this segment of the population is not favored by adoption agencies.
- Now it's Mozart's poise, craft and wit that tend to get scanted.
Derivatives
scantly
- They have wonderful calamari, pale as dawn light, scantly breaded, quickly fried, and just as buoyant as a breeze.
- They put pictures of scantly clad women on their covers.
- Many are not aware that this song was scantly known during the lifetime of Bankim himself.
scantness
Origin
Middle English: from Old Norse skamt, neuter of skammr 'short'.