sparse

UK/spɑːs/US/spɑːɹs/

adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,747 of 15,258mostly written

Sparse means thinly spread, with big empty gaps. Sparse vegetation, sparse hair, the crowd was sparse.

It describes distribution rather than quantity — a sparse population may be large in total and spread thinly. In computing, a sparse matrix is one mostly full of zeros, and storing only the rest is what makes huge calculations possible.

Definitions of sparse

1adjectivesparseThinly spread, with big empty gaps.B2+
“The grass was sparse on the dry hillside, with patches of bare earth.”

sparse is a quality of distribution.

Also accepted in games: scattered, scanty

Where it comes from

Latin
sparsus
English, today
sparse

Borrowed from Latin sparsus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

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sparse in the wild

In numerical analysis and scientific computing, a sparse matrix or sparse array is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero.
Sparse matrix
For example, consider a line of balls connected by springs from one to the next: this is a sparse system, as only adjacent balls are coupled.
Sparse matrix
In computer science, a sparse file is a type of computer file that attempts to use file system space more efficiently when the file itself is partially empty.
Sparse file
Most commonly, sparse files are created when blocks of the file are never written to.
Sparse file
The opposite, a graph with only a few edges, is a sparse graph.
Dense graph

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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.

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