meager

English

Alternative forms

• meagre (Commonwealth)

Etymology

From Middle English megre, from Anglo-Norman megre, Old French maigre, from Latin macer, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱrós. Akin, through the Indo-European root, to Old English mæġer (“meager, lean”), West Frisian meager (“meager”), Dutch mager (“meager”), German mager, Icelandic magr whence the Icelandic magur, Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager. Doublet of maigre.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmiɡɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmiːɡə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːɡə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: mea‧ger

Adjective

meager (comparative meagerer, superlative meagerest) (American spelling) (Canadian spelling, common)

1. Having little flesh; lean; thin.
2. Poor, deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent

   Synonyms: paltry, scanty, inadequate, measly

   A meager piece of cake in one bite.

   The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.

   • 1607, Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors, or, The touchstone of a golden temperature, or ...‎^[1], page 54:

     ...that begets many ugly and deformed phantasies in the braine, which being also hot and drie in the second extenuates and makes meager the body extraordinarily, ...

   • 1637, William Shakespeare, The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice: With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke...‎^[2], page E5:

     Nor none of thee thou pale and common drudge tween man and man: but thou, thou meager lead which rather threatnest then dost promise ought...

   • 2002, Huang Chin-shing, Business as a Vocation: The Autobiography of Wu Ho-Su‎^[3], Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 26:

     Making the run from Taipei to Panchiao every day to sell the gold-colored paper, he scraped together a meager livelihood.

3. (set theory) Of a set: such that, considered as a subset of a (usually larger) topological space, it is in a precise sense small or negligible.

   Antonym: dense

4. (mineralogy) Dry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:impoverished

Derived terms

• meagerly
• meagerness

Descendants

• Jamaican Creole: mawga

Translations

lean

• Arabic: ضَئِيل (ḍaʔīl)
• Czech: hubený (cs)
• Dutch: mager (nl)
• Esperanto: magra (eo)
• Finnish: laiha (fi)
• French: maigre (fr)
• Georgian: მჭლე (mč̣le), გამხდარი (gamxdari)
• German: mager (de)
• Greek: ισχνός (el) (ischnós)
• Italian: magro (it)
• Latin: macer
• Maori: kōhoka
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Portuguese: magro (pt)
• Romanian: macru (ro)
• Russian: худо́й (ru) (xudój), то́щий (ru) (tóščij)
• Swedish: mager (sv)

poor, deficient or inferior

• Czech: ubohý (cs), mizerný (cs), nedostačující
• Dutch: mager (nl), schamel (nl)
• Finnish: niukka (fi)
• French: maigre (fr), pauvre (fr) m
• Georgian: ღარიბი (ka) (ɣaribi), გალეული (galeuli), უქონელი (ukoneli)
• German: mager (de)
• Greek: ισχνός (el) (ischnós), πενιχρός (el) m (penichrós), λιγοστός (el) m (ligostós), γλίσχρος (el) m (glíschros)
• Latin: macer
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Plautdietsch: pukrich
• Portuguese: pobre (pt)
• Russian: ску́дный (ru) (skúdnyj), бе́дный (ru) (bédnyj), ми́зерный (ru) (mízernyj)
• Spanish: pobre (es), escaso (es), deficiente (es)
• Ukrainian: мізе́рний (mizérnyj), убо́гий (uk) (ubóhyj)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

• Korean: ^{(please verify)} 마르다 (ko) (mareuda)
• West Frisian: ^{(please verify)} meager

Verb

meager (third-person singular simple present meagers, present participle meagering, simple past and past participle meagered)

1. (American spelling, transitive) To make lean.

Anagrams

• Graeme, meagre

West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian *māger, from Proto-Germanic *magraz, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱrós.

Adjective

meager

1. skinny, not well fed
2. lean, lacking in fat

Inflection

Inflection of meager
uninflected	meager
inflected	meagere
comparative	meagerder
		positive	comparative	superlative
predicative/adverbial		meager	meagerder	it meagerst it meagerste
indefinite	c. sing.	meagere	meagerdere	meagerste
	n. sing.	meager	meagerder	meagerste
	plural	meagere	meagerdere	meagerste
definite		meagere	meagerdere	meagerste
partitive		meagers	meagerders	—

Further reading

• “meager”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011