Adjective

(er)

Somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent.

* {{quote-book, year=1864–1865, author=Charles Dickens, title=

, passage=Present on the table, one scanty' pot of tea, one '''scanty''' loaf, two '''scanty''' pats of butter, two ' scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1979, author=by B. Jonson, title=

, passage=Traditions older than paleoarctic, as scanty as the evidence may be, show clearly that colonization of Alberta and even as far north as southern Alaska came from the south.}}

Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious.

* I. Watts.

In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Lacking flesh or substance; skinny or scanty.

*{{quote-news, year=2007, date=December 23, author=David Kirby, title=Needing No Weatherman, work=New York Times citation

, passage=His lines are jazzy and improvisational, as though he is trying to figure himself out on the page, and the poems themselves are skinny and underfleshed ; one in this new collection is called Poem on Toilet Paper, but they all look as though they were written that way. }}