escasso

Escasso is a Portuguese adjective meaning scarce, meager, or insufficient. It describes quantities or conditions that are not enough to meet needs or demands, such as recursos escassos (scarce resources), tempo escasso (limited time), or financiamento escasso (insufficient funding). The term is used across Lusophone contexts, including Portugal, Brazil, and other Portuguese-speaking regions.

In everyday and technical language, escasso emphasizes constraint and prioritization. It is common in economics and public discourse to discuss scarcity, but escasso directly qualifying a noun is frequent: recursos escassos, informação escassa, oportunidades escassas. The related noun escassez denotes the broader condition of scarcity.

Etymology and cognates: The word escasso has cognates in other Romance languages, notably Spanish escaso and Italian scarso. The related noun escassez is the Portuguese term for scarcity; it shares the same semantic field as escasso.

Usage and nuance: Synonyms include insuficiente and pouco abundante; antonyms include abundante and copioso. It is used across formal and informal registers to describe material, temporal, informational, or conceptual scarcity.