scant

adj

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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. Sparing; parsimonious; chary.

   “Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.”

3. Slightly diminished; just short of the amount described.

   “a scant cup of sugar”

verb

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.”

   “where man hath a great living laid together and where he is scanted”

   “I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on your actions.”

2. (intransitive)To fail, or become less; to scantle.

   “The wind scants.”

det

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.”

   “The summer I answered my first personals, I was a 19-year-old dyke living alone in a three-room bachelorette pad, scant blocks from Main Street, Waltham, Massachusetts.”

   “[Minnesota 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. But Montana’s vanishingly small Jewish population makes it particularly clear that this strategy has little to do with flesh-and-blood Jews at all.”

noun

1. A small piece or quantity.

   “A blonde appeared from the officers' room, wearing a scant of material that passed for issued undergarments.”

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 unfrequently happen if there is a scant of wood, or rain intervenes to damp it.”

   “I was greatly surprised, however, in this very fertile and abundant country, to find so great a scant of provisions in the inns.”

   “Even if labour were diverted to a great extent from our grand staple, the cotton manufacture, we are not prepared to admit that the country would be worse off. The worst that could happen in such a case would be, that for a few years, during the inordinate progress of railways, our population would run short of shirts and shifts. If the woollen manufacture be the theme, there would be a scant of coats and petticoats; or if the earthenware manufacture, there must be fewer teapots and pipkins.”

3. A block of stone sawn on two sides down to the bed level.
4. A sheet of stone.
5. A slightly thinner measurement of a standard wood size.

adv

1. (dated, not-comparable, 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 Academiques next him.”

   “So weak that he was scant able to go down the stairs.”