sparse

Record heat and sparse rainfall in Europe this summer hurt production.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026

But when Walker and Auen plunge our cipher, Béatrice, into the world of sparse electrostatic video, the result is both harrowing and unbelievably beautiful.

From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2026

If USC had maintained its traditional rivalry scheduling with Notre Dame this season, they would have sold out the Coliseum on Thanksgiving Saturday instead of subjecting a sparse August crowd to possible heatstroke.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

Its dry climate and sparse vegetation leave fossil-bearing rocks exposed, while its geology contains sedimentary layers of the right age to preserve dinosaur remains.

From Barron's ● Sep. 3, 2026

He sat a while with those longshoremen, shipwrights, and weatherworkers, taking pleasure in their slow, sparse conversation, their grumbling Gontish speech.

From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Fed released a much sparser statement summarizing recent economic developments that avoided any hint on its next move.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026

However, Williams said, there are important differences between regions where fires erupt in forests with abundant vegetation fuel and regions like Southern California, where fires often burn through sparser shrubs and grasses.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2025

In contrast to conventional computing where every part of the system is always on and available to communicate with any other part all the time, activation in neuromorphic computing can be sparser.

From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2024

While experts had previously speculated that Gigantopithecus was driven to extinction as their preferred forest habitats became sparser, the known fossils of the ape lacked defined dates to test the idea.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 10, 2024

Throughout human history, centralized states with metal weapons and armies supported by dense agricultural populations have swept away sparser populations of stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

In this case, the error is making a call based on the sparsest of evidence.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 15, 2021

There is the couple with two daughters, known until recently by only the sparsest of details: They’d moved into the big house that replaced the old house that was razed after its original owner died.

From New York Times ● May 1, 2020

At the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, security officers reported some of the sparsest crowds they’ve seen as they prepared to shutter the popular museum Friday.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 13, 2020

The more successful moments, at least from a purely musical standpoint, were the sparsest: a solo piano performance by John Legend, and a similarly scaled delivery by Taylor Swift, before she shifted into hair-tossing bombast.

From Chicago Tribune ● Jan. 27, 2014

It’s the sparsest bed I’ve ever seen: small and pale yellow with a sheet, a topsheet, and one pillow.

From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini