All 7 Uses of
scarcity
in
The Souls of Black Folk
- Furniture was scarce.†
Chpt 4 *scarce = in short supply OR barely or hardly (by a small margin)
- Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;—these are the extremes of the Negro problem which we met that day, and we scarce knew which we preferred.†
Chpt 7
- All through the Carolinas and Georgia, away down to Mexico, rise these gaunt red buildings, bare and homely, and yet so busy and noisy withal that they scarce seem to belong to the slow and sleepy land.†
Chpt 8
- But with all this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a day when fresh air is scarce.†
Chpt 8
- The air scarce breathed.†
Chpt 13
- Caricature has sought again to spoil the quaint beauty of the music, and has filled the air with many debased melodies which vulgar ears scarce know from the real.†
Chpt 14
- Love-songs are scarce and fall into two categories—the frivolous and light, and the sad.†
Chpt 14
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."