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Scarce vs Unwonted - What's the difference?

scarce | unwonted | Related terms |

Scarce is a related term of unwonted.


As adjectives the difference between scarce and unwonted

is that scarce is uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand while unwonted is not customary or habitual; unusual; infrequent; strange.

As an adverb scarce

is scarcely, only just.

scarce

English

(wikipedia scarce)

Adjective

(er)
  • Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
  • * (John Locke)
    • You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen one fifth in value.
  • * , chapter=3
    • , title= 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.}}
  • Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of .
  • * (John Milton)
    • A region scarce of prey.

    Adverb

    (-)
  • Scarcely, only just.
  • * Milton
    • With a scarce well-lighted flame.
  • * 1854 , (Edgar Allen Poe), (The Raven):
    • And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure that I heard you [...].
  • * 1898 , , (Moonfleet) Chapter 4:
    • 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.
  • * 1931 , William Faulkner, Sanctuary , Vintage 1993, p. 122:
    • Upon the barred and slitted wall the splotched shadow of the heaven tree shuddered and pulsed monstrously in scarce any wind.

    See also

    * make oneself scarce

    Anagrams

    *

    unwonted

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Not customary or habitual; unusual; infrequent; strange.
  • * 1610 , , act 1 scene 2
    • Be of comfort; / My father's of a better nature, sir, / Than he appears by speech: this is unwonted , / Which now came from him.
  • * 2008 , Edna Lyall, To Right the Wrong:
    • [...] enjoying in their quiet way the unwonted atmosphere of youth and happiness.
  • * 2008 , Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica :
    • On the other hand, it was not so well known among them that Moses was always to be their ruler, and so it behooved those who rebelled against his authority to be punished in a miraculous and unwonted manner.
  • * 2003 , Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything'', ''Black Swan , pg.23:
    • ...And ocean salinity, of course, represented only the merest sliver of my ignorance. I didn't know what a proton was, didn't know a quark from a quasar, didn't know how geologists could look at a layer of rock on a canyon wall and tell you how old it was, didn't know anything, really. I became gripped by a quiet, unwonted but insistent urge to know a little more about these matters and to understand above all how people figured them out.
  • (archaic) Unused (to); unaccustomed (to) something.
  • * 1924 : ARISTOTLE. Metaphysics . Translated by W. D. Ross. Nashotah, Wisconsin, USA: The Classical Library, 2001. Available at: . Book 1, Part 5.
    • we demand the language we are accustomed to, and that which is different from this seems not in keeping but somewhat unintelligible and foreign because of its unwontedness .

    Derived terms

    * unwont * unwontedly * unwontedness

    References

    *