From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsparsesparse /spɑːs $ spɑːrs/ adjective FEW/NOT MANYexisting only in small amounts his sparse brown hair rural areas with sparse populations —sparsely adverb a sparsely populated area —sparseness noun [uncountable]
Examples from the Corpus
sparse• Information on the disease is sparse.• Details of Dixon's life are sparse and sometimes contradictory.• From our sparse apartment, a daily warmth could be made to exist.• However, sunshine was a sparse commodity and we found the short, dark winter days of these latitudes very depressing at first.• Reading from an empty area of a sparse file will return garbage.• He combed back his sparse hair.• Trees are sparse in this part of the world because of the continuous wind that blows across the plains.• Driven out from richer regions, all they now had were these vast but very sparse pastures.• Agriculture in the south will suffer as underground water is exhausted and already sparse summer rain disappears.• sparse traffic• They can, therefore, exist quite happily in areas of sparse vegetation.Origin sparse (1700-1800) Latin sparsus “spread out”, from the past participle of spargere “to scatter” 