Exiguous means very small in amount — so small it feels thin, tight, or not enough. Exiguous funds, an exiguous smile, exiguous evidence: there is some, but barely. It is a rare, bookish adjective. You will almost never hear it in speech; it lives in careful writing where the writer wants “tiny” to sound dry and exact, not cute. It describes quantity (how much), not quality (how good), and not size of a person. Though actually, the Latin behind it leaned toward “strict” and “exact,” like something measured against a line — English kept the “so little it has been pared down” side of that idea.