scarcity

UK/ˈskɛəsɪti/US/ˈskɛɹsɪti/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,341 of 15,258leans written

Scarcity is a shortage of something people need. A scarcity of housing.

It is relative to demand rather than absolute, which is why it can appear without anything being lost. Scarcity raises prices and also raises how much people want the thing.

Definitions of scarcity

1nounscarcityA shortage of something people need.B2+
“The scarcity of small flats pushed the rent up by a third.”

scarcity is a shortage.

Where it comes from

Old Northern French escarsete comes from escars, scanty, from Latin excerpere, to pick out.

fro-nor
escarsete
Middle English
scarsite
English, today
scarcity

Middle English scarsite, from fro-nor escarsete; by surface analysis, scarce + -ity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

scarcity in the wild

Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing.
Artificial scarcity
Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services.
Post-scarcity
Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.
Post-scarcity
Physical water scarcity is where there is not enough water to meet all demands.
Water scarcity
Regions with a desert climate often face physical water scarcity.
Water scarcity

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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