scanty vs sparse

scanty

adj
  • Sparing; niggardly; parsimonious; stingy. 

  • Somewhat less than is needed in amplitude or extent. 

sparse

adj
  • Not dense; meager; scanty 

  • Having few nonzero elements 

  • Having widely spaced intervals. 

How often have the words scanty and sparse occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )