sparse

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sparsus (“scattered”), the past participle of spargō (“to scatter, sprinkle, strew”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} According to de Vaan, the Latin verb comes from Proto-Italic *sparg- and Proto-Indo-European *sp(e)rg- (“to strew”), an extended form of Proto-Indo-European *sper- (“to spread, sow”), the root of Hittite išpar- (“to spread out, strew”) and Ancient Greek σπείρω (speírō, “to strew, sow”).^[3] The OED compares Italian sparso, Portuguese esparso and French épars.^[2] An earlier verb sparse, to scatter, was taken in the 16th century from the Latin participial stem spars-, compare Old French esparser.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of writing, having wide spaces between the words: 1727, in the correspondence of R. Wodrow, a Scottish use.^[2][5][3] The OED has an adverbial use, "sparsely", from 1725, in J. Armstrong,^[2] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1715–25.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The adjective began as Scottish legal and clerical usage for widely spaced writing; the English Dialect Dictionary still recorded Scottish lawyers saying that a paper was sparsely written.^[8][2][9] From 1753 botanists used it for leaves and branches set in no regular order,^[2][10][11] and Webster (1828) gave a sparse population as his example.^[11][2] The general sense, thinly scattered over an area, followed in the early 19th century, and by 1871 it could mean scanty.^[2] The Century Dictionary noted that the word had been wrongly taken for an Americanism and objected to as needless beside scattered.^[3] The 16th-century verb sparse, to scatter or spread abroad, was obsolete by the mid-17th century.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 1535 – the verb sparse, to scatter or distribute (obsolete by 1650).^[2]
• 1725 – adverbial, sparsely.^[2]
• 1727 – Scottish, of writing, widely spaced.^[2][5]
• 1753 – botany, scattered.^[2][10]
• 1801 – marked by wide intervals, in Jefferson.^[2]
• 1828 – of population.^[2][11]
• 1851 – thinly populated.^[2]
• 1871 – scanty.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Thinly scattered or spread out; not dense: sparse grass on the dunes.^[12][10][2]
2. Small in amount; scanty or meagre: a sparse moustache.^[12][10][2]

Word family

• sparsely
• sparseness
• sparsity
• unsparse

Related words

• sparge
• disperse
• intersperse
• asperse
• sperm
• spore

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c d Webster, Noah (1828), An American Dictionary of the English Language, New York: S. Converse
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins