A sprinkling is a small amount of something spread thinly over an area, with gaps between the bits. Two uses. First the literal one, about small dry or liquid things: a sprinkling of salt on chips, a sprinkling of snow on the road, a sprinkling of sugar on top of a cake. The picture is always of separate little pieces landing here and there, not a thick layer — a sprinkling of snow is the kind you can still see the ground through. Second, and just as common, the figurative one: a small number of people or things scattered among others. 'A sprinkling of tourists', 'a sprinkling of French words in his English'. Here it says both 'a few' and 'spread out, not in one group', which is more than 'a few' alone tells you. It nearly always comes as 'a sprinkling of…'. The word can also just be the -ing form of the verb sprinkle ('sprinkling cheese on the pasta'), so the meaning depends on whether an 'a' is standing in front of it.