few and far between

Meaning: (idiomatic)Rareandscarce; hard to find.Synonyms:thin on the ground,deficient,in short supply,wanting,lacking,uncommon;rare;see alsoThesaurus:rareAntonyms:far and wide,thick on the ground,common,widespread,abundant;ubiquitous1909, John Claude White,Sikhim and Bhutan, page15:There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and I have met several lamas, notably the Phodong Lama of Sikhim and others like him, men who were thoroughly capable, who acted up to their principles, and whom I thoroughly respected, but I am sorry to say such men werefew and far between.1950May, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, inRailway Magazine, page300:On a line like the Santa Fe, in such desert country as that on the Chicago-Los Angeles main line through Arizona and New Mexico, stations arefew and far between, and at many of them one or two employees are the only permanent staff.1979August, Michael Harris, “A line for all reasons: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway”, inRailway World, page414:As with other railways, more Mk 1s are urgently required but disposals by BR arefew and far betweenat present.2010December 29, Mark Vesty, “Wigan 2 - 2 Arsenal”, inBBC‎[1]:The gear change never happened and although chances werefew and far betweenin the second half it looked like below-par Arsenal would escape the DW Stadium with three points - especially when N'Zogbia was sent off with 12 minutes to play.

Examples:

EN: Where men are men and women are few and far between.
ES: Donde los hombres son hombres y las mujeres son pocas y están dispersas.
EN: The cause of this vast purity Must be That men at sea are few and far between
ES: La razón de su vasta pureza será... que en el mar son pocos los hombres... y separados están.
EN: So jobs were few and far between and I fell back in my old side line, Swedish massages,
ES: Los trabajos escaseaban, así que volví a mi antiguo puesto de masajista.
EN: Your letters are so few and far between.
ES: Tus cartas son contadísimas.
EN: Although the sea lanes to Adak are constantly traveled by convoys and contact with enemy submarines is a daily occurrence, sinkings in these waters have been few and far between.
ES: A pesar de que los enlaces marítimos de Adak están bajo constante vigilancia y los encuentros con enemigos son el pan de cada día, los hundimientos en estas aguas han sido muy poco frecuentes.
EN: Up in the fells, villages are few and far between.
ES: En lo alto de las colinas, son contados los pueblos que hay.
EN: Good masters are few and far between.
ES: Buenos maestros hay pocos.
EN: Real bonanzas are few and far between.
ES: Las minas reales son muy escasas.
EN: After that scandal last autumn patients are few and far between.
ES: Verá, desde el escándalo de este otoño, cada vez tengo menos pacientes.
EN: Suckers are few and far between.
ES: Los papanatas escasean.
EN: Remember, deals like this are few and far between.
ES: Lo repito, tardaremos en encontrar una carrera como ésta.
EN: Luckily, the likes of you are few and far between!
ES: ¡Liantes como usted no se encuentran todos los días!
EN: We're few and far between.
ES: Somos muy contados.
EN: I'm a sucker for a symphony but... possibilities to do something like that as a youth were few and far between.
ES: La música clásica me encanta. Pero no he tenido muchas oportunidades de divertirme.
EN: Strange as it may seem, the people with new ideas are few and far between.
ES: Por extraño que parezca, nacen pocas personas con nuevas ideas.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).