scarce
adj.adj. available in very small amounts or hard to find. You use this to describe things like food, water, or money when there is not enough for everyone.
adj. insufficient for the demand or available in limited quantities. Often used in economic or environmental contexts to describe resources.
Fresh water is scarce in the desert.
During the long winter months, fresh vegetables became scarce and very expensive at the local market.
As natural resources become increasingly scarce, global powers are forced to reconsider their consumption patterns and invest in sustainable alternatives to avoid future conflict.
From Middle English scars, scarse, from Old Northern French scars, escars ("sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor"; > French échars, Medieval Latin scarsus (“diminished, reduced”)), of uncertain origin. One theory is that it derives originally from a Late Latin scarpsus, excarpsus, a participle form of *excarpere (“take out”), from Latin ex- + carpere; yet the sense evolution is difficult to trace. Compare Middle Dutch schaers (“scarce”), Middle Dutch schaers (“a pair of shears, plowshare”), scheeren (“to shear”). The standard pronunciation having the /ɛə(ɹ)/ vowel instead of expected /ɑː(ɹ)/ is due to a tendency for Old and Middle French preconsonantal /ar/ to be borrowed as Middle English /aːr/ that only survives in this word and dace in the modern standard, but is more frequent in Early Modern English and traditional dialects; compare Scots gairden (“garden”), lairge (“large”).
Commonly follows a linking verb like 'become' or 'remain'.
the scarce of foodthe scarcity of foodLearners often use the adjective 'scarce' where the noun 'scarcity' is required.