Paucity vs Plethora - What's the difference?
paucity | plethora |
Fewness in number; too few.
* 1915 , , The Golden Slipper , problem 7:
* 2006 , Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, "
A smallness in size or amount that is insufficient; meagerness, dearth.
* 1898 , , "At the Appetite-Cure":
* 1915 , , Michael O'Halloran , ch. 12:
(usually, followed by of) An excessive amount or number; an abundance.
* Jeffrey
(medicine, archaic) An excess of red blood cells or bodily humours.
Pronounced: .
As nouns the difference between paucity and plethora
is that paucity is fewness in number; too few while plethora is (usually|followed by of) an excessive amount or number; an abundance.paucity
English
Noun
- But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves.
Uncle Sam Wants You," Time , 13 July:
- Your tax refund might be late, owing to a paucity of number crunchers.
- Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of food.
- Here is where the paucity of our language is made manifest.
Synonyms
* dearth, scantiness, scarcityExternal links
* * *plethora
English
Noun
(en noun)- The menu offers a plethora of cuisines from around the world.
- He labours under a plethora of wit and imagination.
Quotations
* 1849 , *: I pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man, with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his, gave him more gazes than he sent. * 1927 , (The Aftermath of Gothic Fiction) *: Meanwhile other hands had not been idle, so that above the dreary plethora of trash like Marquis von Grosse's Horrid Mysteries ..., there arose many memorable weird works both in English and German.Synonyms
* glut, myriad, surfeit, superfluity, slewSee also
* myriadReferences
* “plethora]” listed in the [2nd Ed.; 1989
Pronounced: .
