sparse
UK[spɑːs]US[spɑːrs]
adj
Present only in small amounts or at large intervals; thinly scattered.
adj
(of a matrix) having many zero elements.
Etymology
The word 'sparse' entered English in the early 18th century, directly from the Latin past participle 'sparsus' of the verb 'spargere', meaning 'to scatter, sprinkle, or strew'. This Latin verb can be traced further back to the Proto-Indo-European root (s)pergh-, meaning 'to strew, to scatter'. The semantic journey is remarkably direct: from the literal act of scattering objects so they are spread far apart, to the modern abstract adjective describing anything that exists in a scattered, thin, or meager distribution. This logic perfectly captures the essence of sparseness, whether applied to population, hair, vegetation, or data in a computer matrix.
Analysis
The word is a simplex loanword from Latin. It is not productively formed from separable morphemes in modern English.
Examples
The vegetation became sparse as they climbed higher into the mountains.
Population is sparse in the desert regions of the country.
The algorithm is optimized for processing sparse data sets.