Whenever I’m sewing or cooking I quite often see directions with the word “Scant” in them. For example, “sew a scant 1/4 inch hem” or “scant 1 tsp of salt”. So after many years of glossing over this word, it suddenly jumped out of the page at me when I was cooking recently. So I decided to investigate. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but it actually means, a little less than or not quite a full measure. So when a pattern says to sew a scant 5/8 inch seam, it means sew a little less than 5/8 of an inch from the edge or if a recipe calls for a scant tsp of salt, it means not quite a 1tsp of salt.

I guess this little word was actually quite important all this time!

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