Frequent commenter Paul sent me a link to Sam Leith’s “In defence of the smiley” (“It is time to give the emoticon the praise it deserves”) and quoted the following paragraph:
Why shouldn’t we speak in praise of emoticons? They have some unique virtues. For a start, they introduce a pictorial element into the written language: something western languages have not had since the days of illuminated manuscripts. That is pleasing. Users of kanji or, ancestrally, hieroglyphics are spoilt in this regard; we have been scanted.
Paul finds the use of “scanted” very peculiar. It seems OK to me (definition 4 in Merriam-Webster is “to provide with a meager or inadequate portion or supply : stint”), but I thought I’d check with the Varied Reader; maybe it’s a US/UK thing?
Stateside, “a scant cup of sugar” and the like can be found in recipes, though generally not in those composed in orthodox recipe style. “Err on the side of stinginess” is what’s meant, don’t heap it on. Scant as a verb does seem like primarily a UK thing.
“We have been stinted”: would that have seemed less peculiar ?
It does surprise me, but in a good way.
It’s not a word I would use, but it’s in the American Heritage Dictionary. I like it though. Maybe I’ll try to work it into a conversation.
I know the word from Hopkins:
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells
I think ‘we have been scanted’ is unusual, if not peculiar, in Britain too.
I’ve met that use of “scant” but only once or twice.
“Stint” everyone knows as a verb, as in “Don’t stint”. As a noun it means something like an allowance – say, each commoner has a stint of two cows on the common pasture. That is therefore a “stinted commons”. (The unstinted commons famously fell into very poor condition, a known consequence many centuries older than Economists like to admit.)
“Stint” can also refer to allocated duties – academics over here talk about their teaching stint for this academic year or this term.
I’ve met that use of “scant” but only once or twice.
Yeah, me too, but somehow it didn’t seem odd to me, just uncommon.
Scant has always been a part of my active vocabulary, although not as an everyday word.I’ve used it in a variety of ways: “scant respect,” “A scant chance,” “he scanted the importance of…”
Adjective, yes. Verb, no. I’ve never known scant as a verb.
Me, too, Marja. And the verb “stint” only really survives for me in phrases like “unstinting effort”.
I agree with Marja and Ø about “scant”.
“Stint” I know as a verb (though of limited use), with a meaning similar to “skimp”, and also as a noun, a “stint” being something like a “tour of duty,” with the connotation of a “period of drudgery”. I would never have used “a teaching stint” to refer to my “teaching load” in a given semester, but I remember reading biographical info such as “After a stint as a teacher/ a journalist/ etc …” (X went on to do something else more suited to his/her tastes and abilities).
“Scantily clad” is popular in Britain.
Actually, we like “scantily clad” in the US, also.
BrE speaker here; I’ve never heard “scant” used as a verb in my life. I can understand the meaning, but I’d go as far to say it’s ungrammatical to me.
Michæl: BrE speaker here; I’ve never heard “scant” used as a verb in my life. I can understand the meaning, but I’d go as far to say it’s ungrammatical to me.
From the OED:
Nobody expects the OED!
On the original claim, is the fellow saying he doesn’t see the head of an ox whenever he looks at a capital A? (Not that the alleged “pictogram” kanji for ox/cow/bovine-in-general (=ushi) looks anything more like the animal in question – some sort of demythologization may be needed here; send up the bat-signal for Victor Mair.)
FWIW, maybe “scanted” is equally archaic on both sides of the Atlantic, but “spoilt” isn’t (afaik) even an acceptable minority variant for “spoiled” in AmEng. Google n-gram shows “spoiled” over 10 times as common in the “American English” corpus by the late 1990’s and the first page of “spoilt” hits mostly looked like they’d been miscoded and weren’t really American (a back issue of the “Kenya Gazette”), or were e.g. the title of a book by an American academic that sounds like it’s probably a quote from or allusion to an earlier text with a non-Am author.
Surely A is an upside-down head of an ox.
Why is there ‘spoilt’ in UnAmerican but not for example ‘boilt’ or ‘coilt’?
SFR’s long etymological excerpts pasted directly were great to read too
to speculate that perhaps scant is close sounding to our shaldan (bare), nutsgen to nude etc.
Am I the only one left for whom “scant” is an entirely unremarkable verb? I’ve heard it and I’ve used it for my whole adult life, at least, mostly at table when food is being served out. It means, give less than the recipient is due. “Wait, Ellen, I think you scanted Mattie on the green beans.”
Power restored to my home, though I don’t expect heat or hot water until someone comes to reset the oil burner that provides them, probably on Monday.
AJP: Spoilt is irregular, and there’s no use asking why specific irregularities do and do not exist: as well ask why, if the plural of mouse is mice, the plural of house is not hice.
“Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.” —Swinburne
‘Scant’ as a verb is unremarkable to me, too. I’m familiar with the OED meanings two-through-five and sometimes use three-through-five. And while I’m a native speaker of American English, I’ve had great exposure to various British (and other) forms.
Thanks, John.
If you ask me, shalden is pretty close to German selten, Norwegian sjelden and English seldom = rare(ly).
Just the word “scanted” is enough to bring up the memory of probably the only time I’ve seen it used as a verb, in A Wizard of Earthsea:
The use of what’s usually an adjective as a verb grabs onto the memory because it takes that little bit of extra subconscious effort to parse. It’s efficient, like poetry; more ordinary language would say the same thing in more words, “this skill had been scantily taught” or “this skill had been given scant attention”.