All 4 Uses of
scarcity
in
Light in August
- He knocked again, with scarce interval between; he was still knocking when the door (no shadow had fallen upon the curtain and no step had approached beyond it) fled suddenly and silently from under his rapping hand.†
Chpt 9 *scarce = in short supply OR barely or hardly (by a small margin)
- He could not see her face at all now; he seemed to swing faintly, as though in a drifting boat, upon the sound of her voice as upon some immeasurable and drowsing peace evocative of nothing of any moment, scarce listening.†
Chpt 11
- But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: 'I won't.†
Chpt 13
- When he believed that he had heard the call it seemed to him that he could see his future, his life, intact and on all sides complete and inviolable, like a classic and serene vase, where the spirit could be born anew sheltered from the harsh gale of living and die so, peacefully, with only the far sound of the circumvented wind, with scarce even a handful of rotting dust to be disposed of.†
Chpt 20
Definitions:
-
(1)
(scarcity) shortage (having an amount that is less than desired)
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely (and typically in classic literature), scarce can be short for scarcely or hardly or barely or by a small margin -- such as in "She was scarce ten years old," or "I scarce know why."