Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Insufficiency of amount or supply; shortage.
- noun Rarity of appearance or occurrence.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Sparingness; parsimony; niggardliness; stinginess.
- noun The state or condition of being scarce; smallness of quantity or number, or smallness in proportion to the wants or demands; absolutely, deficiency of things necessary to the subsistence of man; dearth; want; famine.
- noun Synonyms Scarcity, Dearth, Famine. Scarcity of the necessities of life is not so severe as dearth, nor dearth so severe as famine. Primarily, dearth is a scarcity that is felt in high prices, and famine such scarcity that people have to go hungry; but both are generally stronger than their derivation would suggest, famine often standing for extreme difficulty in getting anything whatever to support life.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable the condition of something being
scarce ordeficient - noun countable an
inadequate amount of something; ashortage
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a small and inadequate amount
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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The types of anxiety that I associate with this level are what I refer to as scarcity and avoidance.
The Chemistry of Calm M.D. Henry Emmons 2010
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The American scholar, Regina Schwartz, in a provocative book on the dangers of monotheism as reflected in the Jewish and Christian Bible (The Curse of Cain, Chicago 1997), has argued that underlying this question in Scripture is a tension between what she calls scarcity and plenitude.
Paper for Seminar 'Scriptures in Monotheistic Faith' at St Egidio Conference, Naples, Italy 2007
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The American scholar, Regina Schwartz, in a provocative book on the dangers of monotheism as reflected in the Jewish and Christian Bible (The Curse of Cain, Chicago 1997), has argued that underlying this question in Scripture is a tension between what she calls scarcity and plenitude.
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This excitement and mania put what I call a "scarcity premium" on shares - sending Cisco shares to sell for more than 188 times earnings at the height of the dot-com bubble.
unknown title 2011
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It's easy to believe that scarcity is not important, when you have fallen victim to the illusion of abundance.
Is Economics All About Scarcity?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Yes, scarcity is a major part of this trade, largely due to the unlimited wants us as a nation and world posses.
Is Economics All About Scarcity?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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This removes the notion of scarcity from a definition - not that scarcity isn't important, but it always helped my students think about problems like relative abundance more easily.
Is Economics All About Scarcity?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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While the problem of land scarcity is an issue, this recalls Le Corbusier at his absolute worst, and is a pretty ironic design for a French city.
Tower City is an Ecotopia Stacked Upon Stilts | Inhabitat 2010
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I don't understand how you can say scarcity is not important in some parts of economics.
Is Economics All About Scarcity?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Or as Michael Mandel might put it, that's one of the "big chunks of the economy where scarcity is not important, in any but a formal sense."
Is Economics All About Scarcity?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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