SCANTINESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does scantiness mean? 

• SCANTINESS (noun)
  The noun SCANTINESS has 1 sense:

1. the quality of being meager

  Familiarity information: SCANTINESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SCANTINESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being meager

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

exiguity; leanness; meagerness; meagreness; poorness; scantiness; scantness

Context example:

an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes

Hypernyms ("scantiness" is a kind of...):

deficiency; inadequacy; insufficiency (lack of an adequate quantity or number)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "scantiness"):

wateriness (meagerness or poorness connoted by a superfluity of water (in a literary style as well as in a food))

abstemiousness (restricted to bare necessities)

spareness; sparseness; sparsity; thinness (the property of being scanty or scattered; lacking denseness)

Derivation:

scanty (lacking in magnitude or quantity)

 Context examples 

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)