sparse

The countryside is lush, but the homes are sparse.

From BBC ● Sep. 30, 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

The church had been decorated, with sparse flowers from kitchen gardens and hedgerows, and with streamers of colored crepe paper.

From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

But Greenville offers the same access to the great outdoors, along with a food scene that punches above its weight—all with sparser crowds.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 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

The value of what he brought in body shopping was going to go down as food became sparser.

From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

By 18 months, he had only the sparsest wisps of blond hair, and had yet to produce a single tooth.

From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2023

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

From Scientific American ● Oct. 15, 2021

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