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Paucity   /pˈɔsəti/   Listen
Paucity

noun
1.
An insufficient quantity or number.  Synonym: dearth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Paucity" Quotes from Famous Books



... paucity of information as to the Government plan, I think it can be safely said that no scheme even remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous Bills can be put forward now. Each of those schemes would involve the Irish Parliament in a huge deficit ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... are the fundamental elements of primitive conception and description, and these elements are implied and exemplified, rather than expressed, in thought and utterance. Accordingly there is a notable paucity in names, especially for themselves, among the Indian tribes, while the descriptive designations applied to a given group by ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... at church—was a great critic in sermons; nor was it every preacher that satisfied him; and such was his imitative turn, that he himself could preach by the hour, in the manner—so far at least as voice and gesture went—of all the popular ministers of the district. There was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his discourses: in his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic—"The wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked!" while a passage of a less depreciatory character served him for setting off his middle ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... conclusion, relative to the existence of this family on its shores, excepting from the total absence of any one plant of Proteaceae at those parts of Rottnest and Dirk Hartog's Islands visited during the Bathurst's voyage; an inference may be drawn of the general paucity of any part of the order on the shores of the neighbouring main. Although no species have been found common to shores opposite to each other, in the higher latitudes, the identity of Grevillea mimosoides, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... he has already more than he enjoys. He who would shew the extent of his views, and grandeur of his conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and magnificence, may talk like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune, indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a philosopher ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that 'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in conveying ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... were worth keeping and rereading. Now, when similar correspondence is undertaken, it is dictated to a stenographer, copied on a typewriter, or printed, for few people will take the trouble to read manuscript composition of any kind. Looking backward, we find a marked paucity of ideas and carelessness of writing in correspondence, getting worse the farther back we go. Few letters are preserved these days, except those on business, which is a pity, for a letter is always a unique production, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... The paucity of the narratives in the month of April, is quite noticeable. Why fuller reports were not written out, cannot now be accounted for; probably the feeling existed that it was useless to write out narratives, except in cases ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... will be achieved by one of the first-rate hounds, and gradually they give up hunting and take to listening for the opening note of the favorite. Of course in an open country they would be kept to their work by the whip, but at Newera Ellia this is impossible. This accounts for the extreme paucity of first-rate "finders." ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... South, where, owing to the great size of states and to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was not yet a force. Each state, being in square miles ample enough for an empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent nation. The state was near and palpable; the central ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones. Wretched are they, and mean With paucity that never was simplicity. By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever mourns in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen

... Paris, and then look at the broad double sheets of the "Times" and other morning papers, with the columns of information and original matter which they contain. Compare the flimsy sheets, bad printing, and general paucity of information of the continental daily press, with the clear types, rapid steam power called into action, the outlay, enormous expenditure, and rapid information obtained by our leading journals from all quarters of the globe. I have looked with astonishment and admiration at the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... he was to play in the warlike comedy. To be guard over "white folks," to dare to look them in the face without fear of a blow, in all his sixty years Rafael Hinton had never dreamed such a mission for a man of color. The troopers, too tipsy and subdued to remark the sudden paucity of the force that had overcome them, were tied upon their own steeds, Barney in front of the leader, and Rafe and his son in charge ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... result would be, and then, despite a certain jealousy, not confined entirely to savage rival leaders, Lame Wolf had confidence in Stabber's judgment. Ray had expected long range flank fire, and possibly occasional resistance in front; but, assured of Stabber's paucity in numbers and believing Lame Wolf too busy to send Stabber substantial aid, he thought a sharp lesson or two would clear his front of such Indians as sought to check him, and so rode serenely forward, rejoicing in his mission and in his ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... THIRDLY, it cannot be the visible figure or magnitude, since that remains the same, or is rather lesser, by how much the moon is nearer to the horizon. It remains therefore that the true cause is that affection or alteration of the visible appearance which proceeds from the greater paucity of rays arriving at the eye, and which I term FAINTNESS: since this answers all the forementioned conditions, and I am not conscious of any other perception ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... Owing to the paucity of officers, so many being absent on other foreign service, Midshipman Perkins was appointed acting sailing-master, a very responsible position for so young an officer, which, with the added comforts of a stateroom and well-ordered table in the wardroom, was almost royal in its contrast ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... New Testament, and are of importance to the student of Church history. These are the Neronian persecution ( 1), the death of the Apostles ( 2, 3), and the persecution under Domitian ( 4). The paucity of references to Christianity in the first century is due chiefly to the fact that Christianity appeared to the men of the times as merely a very small Oriental religion, struggling for recognition, and contending with many others coming ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... untidiness. The outhouses are roofless, the farmyards are full of pools and dung heaps, which often extend into the road; and the byroads themselves are quagmires when they do not consist of pointed stones. I was struck by the paucity of the children and the absence of new houses. The population ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... Hawthorne wrote "The House of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short "Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a full current if only left free ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... ahead with their operations and endeavor to strike some decisive blow as early as possible. It was a matter of life and death to them, for, if they had gone by the more southern route, they could not have hoped, in view of the paucity of the roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of time. This loss of time would mean time gained by the Russians for the bringing up of their troops to the German frontier. Rapidity of action ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... had promptly taken possession of the rocky eminence which was the object of their desire, and now prepared, with commendable determination, to maintain themselves at the post thus captured; an impossible feat in consideration of the paucity of their numbers, which fact a wily enemy had already ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Dorothy were likewise stricken with a paucity of words, but they also doubtless understood each other. After a moment or two there fell upon me a shower of questions ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... proof of the saying which ascribes ubiquity to "Scots, Newcastle grindstones, and Birmingham buttons." A tidy, bustling landlady, very American in her phraseology, but kind in her way, took me under her especial protection, as forty men were staying in the house, and there was an astonishing paucity of the softer sex; indeed, in all my subsequent travels I met with an undue and rather disagreeable preponderance of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... kinds of writing there is a tendency to use relation words, phrases, and clauses freely between sentences and paragraphs. But in news writing the paucity of such expressions for subconnection—moreover, finally, on the other hand, in the next place, now that we have mentioned the cause of the divorce—is noteworthy. Editors and the news-reading public ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... each reunion. lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of information concerning the alumnae which has hampered ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... Kling. The Kling always squatting on his heels, smoking, or else rolling himself a bit of areca nut into a sirrah-leaf, and dabbing on a bit of pink lime from his worn, silver box. Mercier tried to talk to the child, to disillusion himself by conversations which showed the paucity of ideas, her retarded mentality. But he always ended by looking at the beautiful, slim hands, at the beautiful, slim feet, at the cotton gown slightly pressed outward by the maturing ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... The History and Development of English Gilds. An essay prefixed to a volume of ordinances of English Gilds, edited by T. Smith. Brentano's essay is only referred to because of the paucity of works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily accessible in English, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... quickly changed the conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his confusion Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... impracticable it would have been for us to have consumed our small stock of provisions while manufacturing a fish-net from bark; and how we did resort to every method at our command of procuring food. Unfortunately we fell upon a year of paucity. The old men of the country bore witness that never before within their memory had there been such ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... if we except the American Civil War, ours have been comparatively little wars. The British regular army has policed an empire and sent punitive expeditions against rebellious tribes with paucity of numbers, in a work which the British so well understand. Our little regular army took care of the Red Indians as our frontier advanced from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. To put it bluntly, we have hired someone to do ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... The paucity of baggage would not have mattered so much had the march begun at the commencement of summer, instead of just as winter was setting in. In the former case, men could have slept in the open air, and a solitary blanket and one change of clothes would ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... too, it may be, from the very paucity of the vegetable forms they could find to copy among the flora of this colder clime; and so, stopped short in drawing from nature, ran off into mere purposeless luxuriance. Had they been able to add to their stock of memories a hundred forms which ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... remembered at all it would be as a dreamer; or as a failure because he had died before accomplishing what his brain and energy and enthusiasm alone could force to fruition. None realized better than he the paucity of initiative and executive among the characteristics of the Slav. What mattered it? He had had glimpses more than once of the apparently illogical sequence of life, the vanity of human effort, the wanton cruelty of Nature. He had known men struck down ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... the only animal the Tasmanian sheep-farmer is annoyed with; and from its paucity, they have not, as in New South Wales, the trouble of securing their flocks in yards ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... original Americans was interrupted by the solicitous aunts and uncles, who, realizing that an abundance of barbarians and a paucity of schools might not be the best of surroundings for a child coming to its first years of understanding, decided on bringing him back into a more civilized and Quakerish environment; at least one less marked by tomahawks, bows and arrows, and other tangible suggestions ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... of Savoy is difficult to treat in a volume like the present, because it requires a book to itself. It is not the paucity of material, but the quantity, that is embarrassing. The great palace which stood here first was built by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, one of the Barons to whom our present Constitution is due. By one ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... piano and gone to bed—a whispered conversation was carried on that had no reference to the girl. It was nearly eleven o'clock when Nevill left the house, and bade Stephen Foster good-night on the step. He knew the way in spite of the darkness and the paucity of street lamps. Having lighted a cigar, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... beach, even when he is not supposed to be on duty and before he has tasted his morning tea. The family telescope is at his eye, as he wants to get a good look at what the sea has been doing, and what is there. To the uninitiated, it seems to have the same paucity of interest as any other shipless stretch of water; but to this expert it has a story. He notes the clouds, the sun, the very rocks; and they say that his gaze is so sharp that it would spot a champagne-cork floating some distance away. But be that as it may, there ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall

... journeys at divers hours. After careful observation of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... records in the statistics of the prices of grain during the various epochs. It is clear that the price of wheat must have depended upon the supply, and the supply, in turn, largely upon the character of the season. The method, as ingenious as it is, failed in HERSCHEL'S hands on account of the paucity of solar statistics; but it has since proved of value, and has taken its place as a recognized method ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... the effects of the inundation upon the soil of Egypt—Paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus; the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dom-palms—The fauna: the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus and the crocodile; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... way here this evening. I was reading an essay by Saleeby on Spencer. You should read it. It is accessible to all men. You can buy it in any book-store or draw it from the public library. You would feel ashamed of your paucity of abuse and ignorance of that noble man compared with what Saleeby has collected on the subject. It is a record of shame that would ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... imaginative power, will be found to have based their boldness of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding that possessed by those who pride themselves on its accumulation without regarding its use. Coldness and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the accuracy, but of the paucity of its statements; true vigor and brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... streetlamps, shawls, muslin or cotton goods. But there is at times the dreaded plague, which decimates wherever it comes; the terrible frequency of capital punishment for comparatively trivial offences; the pleasant probability of meeting with a few highwaymen in every country journey; the paucity of roads, and the extreme roughness of such as do exist; a lamentable lack of education, even in the higher classes, hardly atoned for by the exceptional learning of one here and there; and (though the ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt

... Caius Aurelius, sallied forth upon the wings. The servants, suttlers' boys, and the other multitude appointed to guard the baggage, joined in the shout, so that they suddenly exhibited the appearance of a vast army to the Carthaginians, who despised chiefly their paucity of numbers. For my own part I would not take upon me to assert what some authors have declared, that two thousand eight hundred of the enemy were slain, and that the Romans lost not more than five hundred. Whether the victory was so great or not; it is certain ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... formed one great utterance of the opinions of the hour. The gods of party were present with their embattled seraphim, but the brilliancy of manner and form in the handling of public questions was only less conspicuous than the paucity of original ideas. No principles of wise government had place in any mind, a blunt and jolly personalism as to the Ins and Outs animating all. But Jocelyn's interest did not run in this stream: he was like a stone in a purling brook, waiting ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... twenty-years-old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded Souvenirs." These three volumes represent no large amount of literary labour for so long a period, and the author admits that there is little to show "for the thought and industry of that portion of his life." He attributes the paucity of his productions to a "total lack of sympathy at the age when his mind would naturally have been most effervescent." "He had no incitement to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the pleasure itself of composition, an enjoyment ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... 750—and the Catawbas, on the Catawba river in South Carolina with only 150 persons. These latter were remarkably adventurous, enterprising and courageous; and notwithstanding their remote situation, and the paucity of their numbers, frequently traversed the valley of Virginia, and even penetrated the country on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and between the Ohio river and lake Erie, to wage war upon the Delawares. Their success ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... — N. smallness &c adj.; littleness &c (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... species. He plods through life with downcast eyes and a vision somewhat dimmed by indifference; forgetting, as he progresses, the small scraps of knowledge he acquired by looking sharply during the period of boyhood, when every living creature excited his attention. In Italy, notwithstanding the paucity of bird life, I believe that the peasants know their birds better. The reason of this is not far to seek; every bird, not excepting even the "temple-haunting martlet" and nightingale and minute golden-crested wren, is regarded ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... Forms. As for the Parts of the Earth, he saw that some of them were more simple than others, and therefore resolv'd to begin his Enquiry with the most simple of all. So he perceiv'd that Water, was a thing, whose Essence was not compounded of many Qualities, which appear'd from the Paucity of those Actions which arise from its Form. The same he likewise observ'd in the ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... international troops, combining these operations with the needs of our own mobilization. The Minister of Communications was to go at once to Salonica with a number of engineers to arrange on the spot these technical matters, very complicated from the paucity of means of transport in Macedonia. It was understood that, before any dispatch of troops to Salonica, we should ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... the alleged piety of women is little more than a social habit, reinforced in most communities by a paucity of other and more inviting divertissements. If you have ever observed the women of Spain and Italy at their devotions you need not be told how much the worship of God may be a mere excuse for relaxation and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... The paucity of sculptured decoration in certain places only too plainly designed for it is, too, frequently painfully apparent. Such sculptured decoration and glass as were easily to hand met with perhaps the most ready spoliation, while here and there, from some miraculous reason, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... thing to discover this paucity, which, indeed, fairly beckoned the discoverer. The great thing was to supply the deficiency, and this was what Dr. Dohrn determined to do. He selected Naples as the best location for the laboratory he proposed to found, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... had as to the consequences of this engagement which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of money. Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which might serve some "plodding fellow ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... like this of woman's achievements on the field of Jewish scholarship, the results recorded must appear meagre, owing partly to the paucity of available data, partly to the nature of the inquiry. Abstruse learning, pure science, original research, are by no means woman's portion. Such occupations demand complete surrender on the part of the student, uninterrupted attention ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... "What do you ask for him?" "Too much for any of you to pay," said I. "A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you." "How do you know that?" said one; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. "Come, let us know what you ask for him?" "A hundred and fifty pounds!" said I; "neither more nor less." "Do you call that a great price?" said the man. "Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself injustice, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... my teens, however, I was invited to join the Life School of the Hibernian Academy, as there happened to be a paucity of students at that institution, and in order to secure the Government grant it was necessary to bring them up to the required number. But here also there was no idea of proper teaching. Some fossilised member of the Academy would stand about roasting his toes over the stove. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... The officers here occupied a fine roomy building of two stories, while the men were housed in comfortable sheds round the enclosure. We still furnished guards at the Ajmir and Lahore Gates, the term of duty, through paucity of men for relief, extending over three days. The officer on guard at the former gate visited detachments and sentries at the "Delhi" and "Turkoman" Gates, a distance of a mile and a half through streets in which dead bodies in the last ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... a spiritual and superior state; it simply shows the poverty and paucity of our poor intellectual apparatus, which, like a mirror, reflects only that which is around it, and reflects ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... possibly be caused by the cannibalistic habits of the rat, the flesh of the female being more tender than that of the opposite sex. Whatever may be the cause, it is clear that the wider increase of these creatures is greatly checked by the comparative paucity of females." During the late siege of Paris by the Germans, amongst the various articles of food which necessity brought into use, rats held a high place as a delicacy. It is a difficult matter ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... mean to say the Greek language could not express the idea that slaveholding is sinful? Could not the apostles have communicated the thought that it was the duty of masters to set their slaves free? Were they obliged from paucity of words to admit slaveholders into the Church? We have no doubt the writer himself could, with all ease, pen a declaration in the Greek language void of all ambiguity, proclaiming freedom to every slave upon earth, and denouncing ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more room ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... write correctly; in the second, you have nothing to say. We cannot afford to print words merely—much less pay for them. What is worse, many of your sentences are so unnatural and turgid as to suggest that you sought in stimulants a remedy for paucity of ideas. Take friendly advice. Attempt something that you are capable of doing, and build your hopes on that. Any honest work—even sawing wood—well done, is better than childish efforts to perform what, to us, is impossible. Before you can do anything in the literary world ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... that lived in the time before that Christian Religion was received, and authorised by Constantine the Emperour, we may find, that the Books wee now have of the New Testament, were held by the Christians of that time (except a few, in respect of whose paucity the rest were called the Catholique Church, and others Haeretiques) for the dictates of the Holy Ghost; and consequently for the Canon, or Rule of Faith: such was the reverence and opinion they had of their Teachers; as generally ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... impermeable to mere verbiage and affected by the logic of facts alone, he had a ruthless finger ready to poke into the interstices of a loosely-woven argument. Clemenceau spoke but rarely, in low even tones, with a paucity and awkwardness of gesture surprising in a Latin; he was chary of eloquence, disdaining the obvious arts of the rhetor, but he had at his command an endless string of biting epigrams, and his satire wounded with a touch so sharp that it was scarcely felt or seen except by ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... difficult respiration, and a sense of fulness about his stomach; these complaints increasing, his abdomen gradually enlarged, and a fluctuation in it became perceptible. He had no anasarca, no appearance of diseased viscera, and no great paucity of urine. Purges and diuretics of different kinds affording him no relief, my assistance was desired. After trying squill medicines without effect, he was ordered to take Pulv. fol. Digital. in small doses. These ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, Village, District, Falls, which might profitably be joined in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... crowds, weary of teachers in whose endless jangle and jargon of casuistry was no inspiration. The voice of a man who gets his message at first-hand from God has a ring in it which even dull ears detect as something genuine. Alas for the bewildering babble of echoes and the paucity of voices to-day! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... good opinion of them. To come and pay a visit to the object of their love with a leg without any ornaments, a hat without any feathers, a head with its locks not artistically arranged, and a coat that suffers from a paucity of ribbons. Heavens! what lovers are these! what stinginess in dress! what barrenness of conversation! It is not to be allowed; it is not to be borne. I also observed that ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... personal narratives of the time, exaggeration and misrepresentation were then almost so consistent with honesty, that any one who essays to digest trustworthy history from them may be more embarrassed by the abundance than he would be by the paucity of his materials. Our author has spared no pains or expense in the gathering of plans, pamphlets, and solid volumes, in procuring copies of unpublished documents, and in consulting all the known sources of information. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... also serve to reconcile the opinion now generally entertained of the richness of the gold deposits by the few experienced miners who have seen the Couteau country, with the present paucity of production. ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... ancient Greece, those images of serene beauty which may be imitated but not excelled. The reasoning powers of the ancient philosophers who, long before Christ was born, debated the still unanswered riddles of existence, when we compare the paucity of data on which they had to work with the wealth of knowledge now available, must be ranked as high as the intellectual ability of our foremost thinkers of to-day. In mechanical proficiency the world has indeed ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... British shipping. This I deny is any thing like an equivalent, as the trade with America is carried on almost exclusively in American bottoms. I particularly noted at New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, the paucity of British vessels in those ports; and ascertained that it was the practice among American merchants, who it must be observed are nearly all extensive ship-owners, to withhold cargos, even at some inconvenience, from foreign vessels, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... the acts are accompanied. Originally these two languages were used simultaneously. It needs but to watch the gesticulations with which the savage accompanies his speech—to see a Bushman or a Kaffir dramatising before an audience his mode of catching game—or to note the extreme paucity of words in all primitive vocabularies; to infer that at first, attitudes, gestures, and sounds, were all combined to produce as good a likeness as possible, of the things, animals, persons, or events described; and ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... arbitration, obtained by reference to a changeable, and practically unauthoritative board of judges. Moreover, this government, weak and unorganized as it was, was withdrawn on the adjournment of Congress; for the Committee of States, appointed to act in the recess, was useless, as well from the paucity of its powers, as from the fact that a quorum of its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... satisfied with the paucity of his exclamations, and would have given him up, as un froid Anglois, but that, fortunately, our young hero had each night an opportunity of redeeming his credit. They went to the play—he saw French comedy!—he saw and heard ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... "I guaiss"; and Mr. Maguffin added: "joggrify, entermoligy, swinetax, and paucity was teached me, but I done clar forgit how they run, it's ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... what she had to say, "and this is the source of this organic illness! Had it in past days been treated with such medicine as could strengthen the heart, and improve the respiration, would it have reached this stage? This has now overtly made itself manifest in an ailment originating from the paucity of water and the vigour of fire; but let me make use of some medicines, and we'll see how ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... and Governor Andrew, memorable institutions all,—to you also, true Heart of the Commonwealth, and to republican and Saxon America, the land where a man's a man even in the most inconvenient paucity of pounds sterling. Still yours, I am weary of work and of war, weary of spinning out ten yards of strength-fibre to twenty yards' length. And so when an angel in moustache comes to me out of unknown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... Toda woman often has three or four husbands, who are all brothers, and with each of whom she cohabits a month at a time. What is more singular, such men as, by the paucity of women among the tribe, are prevented from obtaining a share in a wife, are allowed, with the permission of the fraternal husbands, to become temporary partners with them. Notwithstanding these singular family arrangements, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de Nemours is here. I am going to run for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... free population, were generally of persons connected with the merchant service or the military profession; and who, by a residence intended only to be temporary and official, contracted a preference for the climate; where they found great respect and deference, by the paucity of their numbers. It was their example which finally overcame the reluctance to settle, which no mere offers of the crown were sufficient ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... descendants of an old and polished civilization, more than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but little wonder that, excited ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... way back he entered the huts of some peasants, and inquired about their mode of living. The same complaints of the paucity of land, hunger and degradation he heard everywhere. He saw the same pinched faces, threadbare homespuns, bare feet and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... have any claim to respectability, it is indebted for it more to the paucity of inlets into Van Diemen's land, than to any intrinsic merits of its own. After a sleepy course of not more than twenty-five or twenty-seven miles to the NW it falls into Frederick Henry Bay. Its breadth there is two miles and a quarter, and its depth ten fathoms. A few hundred yards above ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... sentence of the many sentences I heard him utter; yet in his "Table-Talk" there is a world of wisdom,—and that is only a collection of scraps, chance-gathered. If any left his presence unsatisfied, it resulted rather from the superabundance than the paucity of the feast.[H] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... age. In London, at least, there is just now little to regret; it wears its dreariest, dirtiest, and most disconsolate garb. The streets are slippery with black mud and blacker ice, a yellow halo surrounds the gas lamps, even the Bude lights look quenched and uncomfortable; cabmen, peevish at the paucity of fares, curse with triple intensity the wood pavement and the luckless garrons that slide and stumble over it; the blue and benumbed fingers of Italian grinders can scarcely turn the organ handles; tattered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... negroes. In the Philippines they are pile-supported bamboo huts of the pattern of those of the Malays. If, then, we take from the forest folk the arts taught them or imitated by them, we reduce them to a very low level of intellect and a remarkable paucity of products from their own powers ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... of the continental congress heretofore referred to, Governor Arthur St. Clair, in the year 1788, opened up a correspondence with the tribes of the northwest in order to bring them to a treaty. The government, though suffering from a paucity of funds, had determined to enter into engagements looking to the fair and equitable purchase of the Indian lands. It was plainly to be seen that unless an accommodation could be arrived at with the tribes that the government either had to abandon ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... the world in its infancy. Not a blade, not an insect, which spoke of the present, was between him and the past. The inveterate antagonism of these black precipices to all strugglers for life is in no way more forcibly suggested than by the paucity of tufts of grass, lichens, or confervae on ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... from the heart, I am apt to be guilty of repetitions. The compass of the heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more bounded than that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are extremely apt to run into one another; but in return for the paucity of its compass, its few notes ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... whatever is of advantage to the desiring person, an object of aversion whatever is of disadvantage; with both one person enters into relation by turns. On account of the comparative paucity of the objects of desire, and the comparative multitude of the objects of aversion, both may be comprised under the general term, 'object of aversion.' Now, these objects of aversion we mean when we use the term 'causes of suffering,' while by the term 'sufferer' we understand ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... were mere mule-tracks. The only legitimate road in existence was of most recent construction, which represented the new birth of British enterprise, from Larnaca to the capital, Nicosia (or Lefkosia), about twenty-eight miles. The regrettable paucity of stone-hammers rendered it impossible to prepare the metal, therefore huge rounded blocks, bigger than a man's head, had been thrown down for a foundation, upon which some roughly broken and a quantity of unbroken smaller stones ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... equally applied to the whole subject of New Holland: about which the reader may promise himself very ample satisfaction in the course of this collection. Let this then be accepted as a pledge in apology for the paucity of observations on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... precision of an ancient creed. The matter of the Sacrifice must come from China. He that would drink Indian Tea would smoke hay. The Pot must be of metal, and the metal must be a white metal, not gold or iron. Who has not known the acidity and paucity of Tea from a silver-gilt or golden spout? The Pot must first be warmed by pouring in a little boiling water (the word boiling should always be underlined); then the water is poured away and a few words are said. Then the Tea is put in and unrolls and spreads in the steam. Then, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... gay world has almost ceased to be national. Every one speaks French sufficiently for all social requirements. It is sometimes to be doubted whether this constant use of a foreign language in official and diplomatic circles is a cause or effect of paucity of ideas. It is impossible for any one to use another tongue with the ease and grace with which he could use his own. You know how tiresome the most charming foreigners are when they speak English. A fetter-dance ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... great waterfall in the hills, some two hundred fifty feet high, but none of us dared to make the point that gives an entire view of it. All we could see added proof of our paucity of words to express our surprise that the reputed great wonders of this "Proud" were really true. On returning we were often obliged to alight and walk over fallen boulders, this being the first trip after the ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... Latin they will not deal; which is one of the reasons [134]Nicholas Car, in his oration of the paucity of English writers, gives, that so many flourishing wits are smothered in oblivion, lie dead and buried in this our nation. Another main fault is, that I have not revised the copy, and amended the style, which now flows remissly, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... and his talented pupil, Lucas van Leyden. Their work impressed him greatly, and he studied out every detail on the canvases until he had absorbed the very spirit of the artist. Then, when he painted, he very naturally took their designs, and treated them in his own way. Indeed, the paucity in invention of those early days must ever impress ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... information regarding Villanueva except for the listing of his name by Cano, p. 43, as having arrived in the Philippines at an unknown date. The destruction of the early records of the Augustinians when the English sacked Manila in 1762 accounts for the paucity of information, but there are a few references which throw some little light on the two Villanuevas. San Agustin, p. 212, says that when Herrara sailed for Mexico in 1569 he left in Cebu only "P. Fr. Martin de Rada and two virtuous clerics, the one named Juan de Vivero, ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous

... thrown in by way of apology for the paucity of facts adduced by Sir Charles Lyell to prove the antiquity of man, but merely to illustrate the force which it is possible, in certain circumstances, for a single fact to have. Thus, for instance, the Scotch fir is not now, nor ever has been ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... sketched. Its fault is want of condensation and of graphic power, so that, although you must follow the traveller through his difficulties and dangers, it is quite as much by effort of sympathy as by reason of interest that you do so. For the paucity of result from all the labor and hardship undergone, the author—considering the losses of material he sustained—cannot be justly criticised; but certainly the bulk of his volume makes its meagre substance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... folk stories and heroic legends, whose interest offers rich rewards in suggestions of a time when honour rested with the sex to whom the inheritance belonged. Thus, the difficulty of establishing a claim for mother-right and mother-power does not rest in any paucity of ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... sex desire, his imagination reverted always to lustful scenes. But what really prevented his returning to a loose woman, over and above the natural squeamishness, was the recollection of the paucity of the last experience. It had been so nothing, so dribbling and functional, that he was ashamed to expose himself to the risk of a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... Wood and were in Delville and High Woods. A footing was established on the Ridge where the British could fight for final mastery on even terms with the enemy. "Slight losses" came the reports from corps and divisions and confirmation of official reports was seen in the paucity of the wounded arriving at the casualty clearing stations and in the faces of officers and men everywhere. Even British phlegm ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... children to some elephants on the left; and, on the right, to a group of gentlemen, some of whom, at all events, are not enclosed in envelopes, writing on their knees, evidently on account of a paucity of tables. There are, besides, sundry figures, who, if they were to appear in the streets of London, or any of our highways, would be liable to the penalties of the Vagrant Act for indecent exposure. Under the tableland by which these figures are supported, some evidence ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... starling, and that of the fourth sub-group, Camarhynchus, is slightly parrot-shaped. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. In a like manner it might be fancied that a bird originally a buzzard, had been induced here to undertake the office of the carrion-feeding Polybori of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find— although I was eagerly looking for it—that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... else in this right little tight little isle, where habit is the very antithesis of the airy license of "Abroad," it is not, as it is in the artistic haunts of the Continent, en regle to vaunt one's self on the paucity of one's shekels or to acknowledge acquaintance with the Medici's pills in their modern form of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... to the traditional has much greater inconvenience than that entailed by a paucity of proper names. In the Black Forest and in Huttenberg you will see him in the dog-days wearing a thick fur cap, because it is an historical fur cap—a cap worn by his grandfather. In the Wetterau, that peasant girl is considered the handsomest who wears the most ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... supplemented by immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island where an abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development of sugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and the unfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil and climate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... was an oubliette," said I. "As a matter of fact, the path down is an easy one, there are no flints, and there is a singular paucity of seaweed of any description. On the other hand, the sun is hot, the sand is soft, and I have already selected that rock, in the seclusion of whose shade I shall prepare myself for the waves. Sorry it's too dangerous for ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... may find survivals of primitive sex customs. They may be traced in our common language, especially in the words used for sex and kin relationships. We can also find them shadowed in certain of our marriage rites and sex habits to-day. The difficulty does not rest in paucity of material, but rather in its superabundance—far too extensive to allow anything like adequate treatment within the space of a brief and necessarily insufficient chapter. For this reason I shall limit ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... contrary diminishing, immensely, the population and the number of those engaged in cultivating the soil and in other useful labour. Was not this alone sufficient to explain the deplorable state of the economy of the Spanish Peninsula, the paucity of its inhabitants, the backwardness of its agriculture, its want of capital, and the nakedness and poverty of its fields and its towns? Indolence being, so to speak, thus sanctified, what stimulus could there be for productive labour? Why ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... quite intermittent. The occasional variations in the state of the disease were remarkable. Some periods were marked with uncommon mental irritability. Pain in the region of the liver, oedema of the inferior extremities, paucity and turbidness of the urine, yellowness of the skin, and great emaciation attended the latter stages of the disease. A degree of stupor occurred. The termination on the 30th of January, 1809, was tolerably quiet. Two days before death he sank into the recumbent posture, and his pulse ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... everything, the effervescence, which depends upon the quantity of carbonic acid gas the wine contains, and this, in turn, upon the amount of its natural saccharine. If the gas be present in excess, there will be a shattering of bottles and a flooding of cellars; and if there be a paucity the corks will refuse to pop, and the wine to sparkle aright in the glass. Therefore the amount of saccharine in the cuve has to be accurately ascertained by means of a glucometer; and if it fails to reach the required standard, the deficiency is made ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... long before he left Stratford for London, his real education had only then begun. To his all-gleaning eye and hungry mind every day he lived brought new accretions of knowledge. Notwithstanding the paucity of recorded fact which exists regarding his material life, and the wealth of intimate knowledge we may possess regarding the lives of other writers, I doubt if, in the works of any other author in the entire history of literature, we can trace ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... and fullness must depend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... these hills are a commodity so scarce that their paucity presents a serious obstacle to intelligible description. Round Tops and High Peaks are innumerable. We hope, when Professor Guyot completes his cursory survey of heights, made eighteen months ago, he will strive to do as in North Carolina, and supply the deficiency. Nomenclature is a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... forced him to become in practice the unconscious leader of the Canadian conservatives, who, under men like MacNab and the leaders of the Orange Lodges, differed only from other parties in the loudness of their loyalist professions, and the paucity of their supporters among the people. Metcalfe complained that at times the whole colony must be regarded as a party opposed to her Majesty's Government.[8] He might have {168} seen that what he deplored proceeded naturally from the identification of himself ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... unbelief of people that are ready in danger to choose any help.(363) Therefore that which is said in answer, that at that time there was a choice of instruments which now is not, may indeed condemn and falsify the declarations at that time, in the supposition of the paucity of instruments, and in the application of that doctrine and divine truth to that time, but it doth not speak any thing against the application of that truth therein contained to our time, it being more manifest, that we have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... brought forth in the United this year; an increase which may be fairly declared to constitute a true elevation of our intellectual standard, and which undoubtedly compensates for the present regrettable paucity of amateur publishing media. In verse, particularly, is the advance notable. Some of our poets are securing recognition in the outside world of letters, whilst many lesser bards show a steady upward ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... write to your lordship, not by way of answer to any letter received from you, but being myself the first to make advances, as though I felt bound to cross a little stream with dry feet, or a ford made manifest by paucity of water. But now that I have left the shore, instead of the trifling river I expected, the ocean with its towering waves appears before me, so that, if it were possible, in order to avoid drowning, I would gladly ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... addition to the rare elements mentioned above, there are a score or so more whose existence is doubtful. Every year is attended by fresh "discoveries" in this prolific source of elementary substances, but the paucity of materials and the predilections of the investigators militate in some measure against a just valuation being accorded to such researches. After having been somewhat neglected for the greater attractions and wider field presented by organic chemistry, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... when he has already more than he enjoys. He who would show the extent of his views and grandeur of his conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and magnificence, may talk, like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet {24} obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... terrible moment when the dish comes in and one rapidly notes the disparity between the paucity of its contents and the vast and eager anticipation of the company. For it is useless to attempt to conceal greed when mushrooms arrive. A certain amount of dissimulation has mercifully been given by a wise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various

... practical traveler is filled with a sense of disappointment at the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the artist will still find enough to delight the eye and fire the imagination in Spain. The ever transparent atmosphere, and the lovely cloud effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will hallow ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... signature and notes. The authoress will be no secret; and as It will certainly get into magazines, why should not you deal privately beforehand with some bookseller, and have a second edition ready to appear soon after mine is finished? The difficulty of getting my edition at first, from the paucity of the number and from being only given as presents, will make the second edition eagerly sought for; and I do not see why my anticipating the publication should deprive you of the profit. Rather than ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving well. She replied 'As usual.' Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, 'You mean that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of intention and a paucity of performance.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... happens to girls who are so very superior to other girls but can read their letters and sneak boys into our school against rules," and back she sped to the house, filled to the brim with knowledge, but with such a paucity of wisdom in her brain that it was a wonder she kept to the path. It was a pity that no one was at hand to quote for her benefit: "Knowledge is haughty that she knows so much, but Wisdom is humble that ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry which is above all human power." Eccles. Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.—The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first century of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... in imagination to the beginning of the Victorian era and ask what was then known of the history of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, we find ourselves confronted with a startling paucity of knowledge. The key to the mysteries of Egyptian history had indeed been found, thanks to the recent efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion, but the deciphering of inscriptions had not yet progressed far enough to give ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... picked on him and called him Sonny and Mother's Darling Boy; and Matt, having, in the terminology of the forecastle, come aboard through the hawse pipes, knew himself for a man and a sailor, despite the paucity of whiskers on his ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... that has been furthered in Paris during the last three weeks is bicycle riding. With the paucity of transportation some means of getting over the magnificent distances of this city had to be found. So people who could ride rented bicycles, and those who had not learned began to take lessons. The girls who work, and those who go on errands ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... of his romances our travelers began to find the whole scene hackneyed; and they were glad to part from him a little sooner than they had bargained to do. They strolled about the anomalous village on foot, and once more marveled at the paucity of travel and the enormity of the local preparation. Surely the hotels are nowhere else in the world so large! Could there ever have been visitors enough at Niagara to fill them? They were built so big for some good reason, no doubt; but it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... were neither black nor white, but a neuter—but by a subtle transposition of tones looked white. Chardin worked from an accumulation of notes, but there are few sketches of his in existence, a sanguine or two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketches has piqued criticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was of a reflective temperament, a slow workman and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... thing because it went to disprove the story of the six days. She firmly believed in the personality of Satan and material fires for wicked souls; and the sweet way in which she lamented the probable paucity of the saved was extremely edifying, not to say touching. This childlike acceptance, this faithful orthodoxy, was one of the things for which the rector liked her so well. He had a profound contempt for science and skepticism together; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... all time, he is part and parcel of the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories; they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their variety of subject, their ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... the interest in each of its three acts centers in a meeting of the lovers and their publication of the play enacting on the stage of their hearts. But it takes music like Wagner's, music surcharged with passion, to body forth the growth of the dramatic personages and make us blind to paucity of incident. When that cannot be had, then pictures and functions of all kinds, solemn and festive, must be relied on to hold the interest. Boito built up such pictures and grouped such functions ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... round the chiefs castle or headquarters and been supported by the produce of his private fief or demesne. The regular Brahman gotras are also few in number, possibly because they were limited by the paucity of eponymous saints of the first rank. The word gotra means a stall or cow-pen, and would thus originally signify those who lived together in one place like a herd of cattle. But the gotras are now exceedingly ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... myself up, to my consternation, I discovered that my pillow was nowhere to be found. Many of the passengers had already gone their ways, and those who remained knew nothing about me or my packet. Indeed, I only drew suspicions on myself, as my paucity of baggage and the pretensions of my dress were decidedly at variance. The gentleman in top-boots and with the brown paper parcel seemed ridiculous enough. Seeing how ineffectual noise was, I held my peace, now that I had nothing else to hold; got on the outside of the first coach for ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard



Words linked to "Paucity" :   scarceness, scarcity



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