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Glite Dictionary
sparsely

sparsely

15 4.6
With few people or things in a large area
  • adverb
  • /ˈspɑːrslɪ/
translation icon : poco
  • The desert is sparsely vegetated, with only a few hardy plants dotting the landscape.
  • sparsely populated
  • sparsely populated area
  • sparsely populated region

This was a sparsely populated, impoverished area.

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Examples

  • Poor road conditions contribute to a relatively immobile population and sparsely populated areas.

    Academic text (2003)

  • The tractor trailer rumbles in low gear along a sparsely populated two-lane road.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Most of these areas are poor, rural, and sparsely populated; their climate

    Academic text (1996)

  • But she attended a rural school in one of the most sparsely populated counties in the country.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • This was a sparsely populated, impoverished area.

    MIT OpenCourseWare

  • Lastly, since Montana is a sparsely populated state, few high schools had more than 1,000 students.

    Academic text (1997)

  • The college district serves 19 densely populated suburban communities and a large sparsely populated rural area.

    Academic text (2003)

  • Like Brazil, Bolivia is home to vast, sparsely populated tracts of the Amazon forest.

    Academic text (1997)

  • Tatooine is sparsely populated.

    Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

  • The sixteen-year-old girl paused to catch her breath at the sparsely trafficked intersection of Dorchester and Broadway.

    Fiction book (2001)

Synonyms

thinly
vssparsely
24 1.2

In a thin layer or spread out lightly

is scattered in small amounts across a wide area
meagerly
vssparsely
  • US
1 6.8

In a small way that is not enough

is about being spread over wide areas rather than simple lack of amount
dispersedly
vssparsely
6.5

In a scattered way across an area, not in one place

is about small quantities placed with wide spaces between items
diffusely
vssparsely
7.5

In a way that spreads out over a wide area rather than staying in one place

is about small amounts distributed with large gaps across an area

Antonyms

densely
30 2.9

In a way that things or people are close together

How Sparse

sporadically
13 6.5
widely
26 1.0
sparsely
15 4.6
thinly
24 1.2
densely
30 2.9

Surface Forms

sparsely positive
sparser comparative
sparsest superlative

Morphology

sparsely = sparse (transparent) = sparse + ly

Standard adverbial formation from the adjective 'sparse' using the productive suffix '-ly', so the meaning is directly derived.

Etymology

The word sparsely comes from sparse, which comes from an old word meaning 'to scatter' or 'spread out'. So, sparsely describes something that is thinly spread or in small amounts across a large area, like a hill with only a few trees.