Scanty means barely enough or insufficient in amount or size. When supplies are scanty, there's just not quite enough to go around comfortably. A scanty meal might leave you still feeling hungry, and scanty rainfall during a growing season worries farmers who need more water for their crops.

The word often suggests a disappointing shortage of something you were counting on. If you do scanty research for a report, you haven't gathered enough information to write a strong paper. When details about an upcoming event are scanty, you don't have much to go on when making your plans.

In historical contexts, scanty evidence means investigators don't have much to work with when trying to solve a mystery or understand what happened.

The word carries a sense that something falls short of what's needed or expected. If someone gives you scanty instructions for a complicated task, you're left wondering what to do next. Scanty is useful when “small” or “little” doesn't quite capture that feeling of inadequacy or insufficiency.