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Paucity vs Ploy - What's the difference?

paucity | ploy |

As nouns the difference between paucity and ploy

is that paucity is fewness in number; too few while ploy is a tactic, strategy, or gimmick.

As a verb ploy is

(military) to form a column from a line of troops on some designated subdivision.

paucity

English

Noun

  • Fewness in number; too few.
  • * 1915 , , The Golden Slipper , problem 7:
    • But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves.
  • * 2006 , Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, " Uncle Sam Wants You," Time , 13 July:
    • Your tax refund might be late, owing to a paucity of number crunchers.
  • A smallness in size or amount that is insufficient; meagerness, dearth.
  • * 1898 , , "At the Appetite-Cure":
    • Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of food.
  • * 1915 , , Michael O'Halloran , ch. 12:
    • Here is where the paucity of our language is made manifest.

    Synonyms

    * dearth, scantiness, scarcity

    Related terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l)

    External links

    * * *

    ploy

    English

    Etymology 1

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A tactic, strategy, or gimmick.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.
  • (UK, Scotland, dialect) Sport; frolic.

    • Etymology 2

    Probably abbreviated from deploy.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (military) To form a column from a line of troops on some designated subdivision.
    • (Wilhelm)
    Antonyms
    * deploy (Webster 1913)

    Anagrams

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