escaso

Forms

escaso (feminine escasa, masculine plural escasos, feminine plural escasas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *excarsus (“picked out, thinned”), from an older *excarpsus, the Vulgar Latin participle of Latin excerpō (“to pick out, select”).^[2][3][4] Wiktionary gives the intermediate form as *escarpsus.^[1] Corominas notes that excarsa glosses excerpta in a 10th-century Vatican manuscript, and that the fuller spelling appears in Carolingian capitularies from 805.^[2] Niermeyer records the word, also spelled scarsus, in Medieval Latin in the sense “extract”.^[5]

The same word is Italian scarso, Occitan escars, Catalan escàs, Portuguese escasso and Old French eschars.^[2][6] Wiktionary relates English scarce.^[1]

The Latin verb is formed from ex- and carpō (“to pluck, gather”).^[7][8] De Vaan derives the simple verb from Proto-Indo-European *kerp- (“to pick, pluck”).^[9] Bénaben explains the Spanish meaning by the idea of taking out a part of a whole.^[10] The Old Spanish ⟨s⟩ stood for a voiceless sound, as the spelling ⟨ss⟩ of Alfonso de Palencia and Nebrija shows.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Calila e Dimna of 1251, where it means “mean, avaricious” and “poor, without goods”.^[2][3] The Lapidario of Alfonso X calls the bearer of a certain stone escasso & mal quisto delos omnes “stingy and disliked by people”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the main sense was “stingy”, as in the Conde Lucanor and Juan Ruiz.^[2][12] Corominas takes the etymological sense to be the modern one, “not abundant”, from “sparse, thinned out”, and finds escaseza “scarcity” in Sem Tob.^[2] Covarrubias in 1611 defined escaso as sparing and miserly, and offered derivations from Latin esca, Hebrew, French escars or Greek.^[13] The Autoridades put first the sense “short, limited, little” (comida escasa, viento escaso), then “mean, ungenerous”, and “not full or complete”, as in dos varas escasas.^[14]

Today the stingy sense is out of use.^[4] In Cuba, Venezuela and Peru escaso is said of a person who is not intelligent.^[15]

Timeline

• 1251 – first record, in the Calila e Dimna.^[2][3]
• c. 1330 – escaseza “scarcity”.^[3]
• c. 1335 – the Conde Lucanor uses it for a stingy person.^[12]
• 1587 – a Mexican nautical text defines viento escaso.^[16]
• 1604 – escasez is recorded.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines escaso as sparing and miserly.^[13]
• 1732 – the Autoridades records the senses “limited”, “mean” and “not complete”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives an etymology, from Medieval Latin scarsus “diminished”.^[17]

Meanings

Adjective

1. scarce, scant: small in quantity: Este año la cosecha fue escasa.^[4][1]
2. Of little importance or worth; slight: un escaso margen.^[4][1]
3. Having little of something, short of it: Este verano vamos escasos de agua.^[4][18]
4. After a quantity, not quite reaching it: dos horas escasas.^[4][18]
5. (obsolete) Mean (mezquino), ungenerous; also as a noun, a miser.^[4]
6. (Cuba, Venezuela, Peru) Of a person, not intelligent.^[15]

Word family

• escasez
• escasear

Related words

• escarcela
• Latin excerpō
• Italian scarso
• English scarce

Usage notes

Viento escaso is a nautical term for a wind that does not let a ship hold its course.^[4][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 691
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. escaso
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. escaso
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. excarpsus
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 273
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. escaso
11. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. escaso
12. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 231
13. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 765
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 560
15. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. escaso
16. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. escaso
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 448
18. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. escaso