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Scanty; not abundant or plentiful; as, a spare diet.

A thought, imagination, or conjecture, which is based upon feeble or scanty evidence; suspicion; guess; as, the surmisses of jealousy or of envy. [We] double honor gain From his surmise proved false. Milton. No man ought to be charged with principles he actually disowns, unless his practicies contradict his profession;…

sh. Spenser. He through a little window cast his sight Through thick of bars, that gave a scanty light. Dryden. Thick-and-thin block (Naut.), a fiddle block. See under Fiddle. -- Through thick and thin, through all obstacles and difficulties, both great and small. Through thick and thin she followed him. Hudibras. He…

ncreasing and often becoming profound at the acme of the disease. Its local lesions are a scanty eruption of spots, resembling flea bites, on the belly, enlargement of the spleen, and ulceration of the intestines over the areas occupied by Peyer's glands. The virus, or contagion, of this fever is supposed to be a micro…

Of inadequate or inferior proportions; small; poor. Scanty and underproportioned returns of civility. Collier.