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Message:: [QUOTE="ilmcoins, post: 3242390, member: 85172"]The difference is in the connotation.  Scarce is about demand while rare is about supply, more or less. "Scarce" tends to relate a quantity of something to its degree of demand, and there's a partial suggestion that the item is a necessity; e.g., "scarce" means "insufficient to meet needs."  In Southern California, for instance, they call water "scarce," but that doesn't make it rare.  There's lots and lots of water and it's easy to find water, as it does on occasion fall from the sky, but the demand is so much higher than the available amount.  Scarcity will tend to focus on things like water, food, arable land, medical supplies, medical personnel, jobs in a bad economy, and so forth. Rare talks more about a things overall frequency, and it's applied much more broadly.  Condors and pandas are rare.  Diamonds are rare (they're also in demand, but the demand is as a luxury, and we would not generally call diamonds "scarce").  Antiques can be rare.  Even a disease can be rare, though we would never call a disease "scarce."  Blue eyes in people of Japanese descent are rare.[/QUOTE]