From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsparsesparse /spɑːs $ spɑːrs/ adjectiveFEW/NOT MANYexisting only in small amounts
his sparse brown hair
rural areas with sparse populations —sparsely adverb
a sparsely populated area —sparseness noun [uncountable]Examples from the Corpussparse• Information on the disease is sparse.• Details of Dixon's life are sparse and sometimes contradictory.• From our sparseapartment, a dailywarmth could be made to exist.• However, sunshine was a sparsecommodity and we found the short, dark winter days of these latitudes very depressing at first.• Reading from an empty area of a sparsefile will return garbage.• He combed back his sparse hair.• Trees are sparse in this part of the world because of the continuouswind that blows across the plains.• Driven out from richerregions, all they now had were these vast but very sparsepastures.• Agriculture in the south will suffer as underground water is exhausted and already sparsesummerraindisappears.• sparsetraffic• They can, therefore, exist quite happily in areas of sparsevegetation.Originsparse(1700-1800)Latinsparsus“spread out”, from the past participle of spargere“to scatter”
