Word of the DayMonday, May 24, 1999
exiguity
\ek-suh-GYOO-uht-ee\ , noun:1.
Scantiness; smallness; thinness;the quality of being meager.
--EXIGUOUS, adjective
--EXIGUOUS, adjective
Quotes:
An exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes
-- George Eliot,
The soldiers' pay is in the highest degree exiguous; not above three half-pence a day.
-- Carlyle,
Origin:
Exiguity derives from the Latin exiguitas, itself from exiguus, meaning "strictly weighed," which came to signify "too strictly weighed"; hence, "meager." Related to exact ("precisely weighed or determined").
