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In my mother tongue there is a very common word to use when you're in a place that is "Not crowded". (Not crowded means few people, cars etc., but not deserted)

In English, I am having a hard time finding the equivalent. I often just say not crowded. Do we have a better word for that? I thought of "Sparse", but I think that's neither right nor a common word for everyday English.

Example 1

How was the event? Was it crowded?

No. There were not many people. It was not crowded.

Example 2

How was the grocery store? Was it crowded?

No. It was mid-day. There were not many people. It was not crowded.

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    Do you say “not crowd” or “not crowded”? I know @rosslh tried to “fix” it in your question, but it is important for us to understand what you already know so we can write answers that are useful to you. It’s not clear because in some places you use crowded and others you use crowd.
    – ColleenV
    Jul 27, 2018 at 20:00
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    I'm not sure there's an English word that fits all of the different categories you suggest, but sparse is probably closest. We'd say "it was not crowded" or "it was sparsely attended", but for cars, we'd say "traffic was very light" or "traffic was sparse" or "the parking lot was mostly empty."
    – John Feltz
    Jul 27, 2018 at 20:12
  • @ColleenV Sorry I didn't see that you had rolled it back. It seems the edit was re-suggested. I approved it before seeing your roll-back, because I saw the tags should be changed.
    – Eddie Kal
    Jul 27, 2018 at 21:30
  • @L.Moneta It's OK, I purposefully didn't mess with the suggested edit in the review queue to let the community have their say - I do hope Learner lets us know if they are confident about the difference between "not crowd" and "not crowded".
    – ColleenV
    Jul 27, 2018 at 22:44
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    Maybe you could edit your question to ask about the difference - I'm not sure I could explain it very well. This question might be helpful for your original question: Antonym of “crowded” that is not “uncrowded”
    – ColleenV
    Jul 28, 2018 at 3:15

3 Answers 3

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Your example asks

How was the event? Was it crowd?

This would be better as

How was the event? Was it crowded?

Some ways to answer "not crowd" could be

There was a poor turnout.

It was poorly attended.

Most seats were empty.

It was almost deserted.

It was a flop.

and so on.

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The best word may be uncrowded. You could also use a modifier with empty, like "almost empty".

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A word you might use is

room

It was not crowded, there was lots of room.
It was too crowded, there was no room to breath.

After having kids, we moved to the country where there is more room.

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