Preponderance vs Scarce - What's the difference?
preponderance | scarce |
Excess or superiority of weight, influence, or power, etc.; an outweighing.
* Macaulay
*
* 1900 , Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams'', ''Avon Books , (translated by James Strachey) pg. 168:
(obsolete) The excess of weight of that part of a cannon behind the trunnions over that in front of them.
The greater portion of the weight.
*
The majority.
*
Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
* (John Locke)
* , chapter=3
, title= Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of .
* (John Milton)
Scarcely, only just.
* Milton
* 1854 , (Edgar Allen Poe), (The Raven):
* 1898 , , (Moonfleet) Chapter 4:
* 1931 , William Faulkner, Sanctuary , Vintage 1993, p. 122:
As a noun preponderance
is preponderance.As an adjective scarce is
uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.As an adverb scarce is
scarcely, only just.preponderance
English
Alternative forms
*Noun
- In a few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states in Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had destroyed.
- But even less disgruntled observers have insisted that pain and un-pleasure are more common in dreams than pleasure: for instance, Scholz (1893, 57), Volkelt (1875, 80), and others. Indeed two ladies, Florence Hallam and Sarah Weed (1896, 499), have actually given statistical expression, based on a study of their own dreams, to the preponderance of unpleasure in dreaming.
References
* *scarce
English
(wikipedia scarce)Adjective
(er)- You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen one fifth in value.
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.}}
- A region scarce of prey.
Adverb
(-)- With a scarce well-lighted flame.
- And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure that I heard you [...].
- Yet had I scarce set foot in the passage when I stopped, remembering how once already this same evening I had played the coward, and run home scared with my own fears.
- Upon the barred and slitted wall the splotched shadow of the heaven tree shuddered and pulsed monstrously in scarce any wind.