meager

English

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• meagre (Commonwealth English)

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman megre, Old French maigre, from Latin macer, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱros. Akin, through the Indo-European root, to Old English mæġer (“meager, lean”), Dutch, German mager, Old Norse magr whence the Icelandic magur.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈmiːɡɚ/
• Rhymes: -iːɡə(r)

Adjective

meager (comparative meagerer, superlative meagerest)

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

   A meager piece of cake in one bite.

   • 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...

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:impoverished

Derived terms

• meagerly
• meagerness

Translations

lean

• Arabic: ضئيل (ar) (da'iil)
• Dutch: mager (nl)
• Esperanto: magra (eo)
• French: maigre (fr)
• German: mager (de)

• Greek: ισχνός (el) (ischnós)
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Romanian: macru
• Swedish: mager (sv)

poor, deficient or inferior

• Dutch: mager (nl), schamel (nl)
• French: maigre (fr), pauvre (fr) m
• German: mager (de)

• Greek: ισχνός (el) (ischnós)
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Spanish: pobre (es) m and f, escaso (es) m, escasa (es) f, deficiente (es) m and f

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.

Translations to be checked

• Korean: 마르다 (mareuda)

• West Frisian: meager

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To make lean.

Anagrams

• Graeme
• meagre

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West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian *māger, from Proto-Germanic *magraz, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱros.

Adjective

meager

1. meager