This is really funny! I've been searching about this for a while now. I think it should be a very frequent word that I can instantly recognize upon hearing but no words come to my mind. Let's say there is a park which is very crowded on the weekends and not so much on workdays. How would you describe the park in those days that not too many people go?
How would you fill the sentence "The park is [blank] today!"?
My problem with "less crowded" is that it's not really the actual word but rather we're trying to convey the meaning by using its antonym. It's like calling a well-lit place "not dark." It is true but there is already a direct word for that meaning. Upon searching I found some other words that could fill the blank like "secluded" or "solitude." But I feel like "secluded" is a place that is always empty of people. Not a place that is less crowded from time to time. You cannot say the park is secluded today! That sounds ridiculous to me! There are also words like "vacant" that seem like overkill. I guess there are no people (or maybe a handful of people) in a vacant place.
I have a unique word for this in my own native language and when somebody asked me for its equivalence in English, I really couldn't figure it out.
Best Answer
There is no solo words contextfree'ly conveying “less crowded” or “anti- crowded”; closest in this literal sense simply of “non crowded” restricted to a singular word [w/c]ould/might “uncrowded” be considered.
However, there are several words that come close in a connotative or extended (trending toward idiomatic) sense, chief among which is "quiet" (more directly opposite to "busy"), "deserted" or "empty" (meaning "completely vacant", more opposite "full") or "nearly deserted" (meaning "close to vacant", taken via context in more a relativistic sense than necessarily literal) or simply 'more than' version of "empty", namely "emptier".
The optimal single-word option to convey "much fewer people present than typical, though not necessarily zero besides self" is probably in most contexts “quiet”:
followed by "emptier" as inferred by its default positive (zeroth-step) form 'empty':
i.e.
, both of which have been used with regularity in this extended semi-idiomatic sense, particularly “quiet” when ‘calmness’ i.e. non-noisiness (compared to the norm) is the deviation. Otoh, “emptier” is slightly more neutral, but closer to "non-crowded" which lacks a positively favorable connotation. If the relative lack of people is perceived as not-good, then “empt[ier/y]” might be a better choice.
That said, there are of course more than a couple multi-word and re-wording options, optimality depending on your intended usage. Chiefly among the latter I oft find myself describing some setting simply as “less crowded than usual”, “saw uncommonly few people for this time of day/week”; or there being “hardly anybody there” or “scarcely anyone present”. The reason for my pairing ‘[some]body’ with “hardly” and ‘[..]one’ with “scarcely” is subtle but real: Consider the idiom "Make youself present." —it isn't "Make your body present."—your actual “being” is closer bound to the ‘one’ness of you yourself, i.e. your personhood with all that entails, as contrasted with ‘being’ness connoting more a mere physical'ly-occupying aspect.