scarce

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
scarce/skeəs/

▶adjective (of a resource) insufficient for the demand.

■ rare.

▶adverb archaic scarcely.

– phrases
make oneself scarce informal leave a place.

– derivatives
scarcely adverb,
scarceness noun,
scarcity noun.

– origin ME (in the sense ‘restricted in size’, also ‘parsimonious’): from Anglo-Norman escars, from a Romance word meaning ‘selected’.