meager

English

Alternative forms

• meagre (Commonwealth English)

Etymology

From Middle English megre, 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”), West Frisian meager (“meager”), Dutch mager (“meager”), German mager, Icelandic magr whence the Icelandic magur, Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmiɡɚ/
• IPA^(key): /ˈmiːɡə/
• Rhymes: -iːɡə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: mea‧ger

Adjective

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

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.

   • 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...

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

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:impoverished

Derived terms

• meagerly
• meagerness

Translations

lean

• Arabic: ضَئِيل (ḍaʔīl)
• Dutch: mager (nl)
• Esperanto: magra (eo)
• Finnish: laiha (fi)
• French: maigre (fr)
• Georgian: მჭლე (mč̣le), გამხდარი (gamxdari)
• German: mager (de)
• Greek: ισχνός (el) (ischnós)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: magro (it)
• Maori: kōhoka
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Portuguese: magro (pt)
• Romanian: macru
• Russian: худо́й (ru) (xudój), то́щий (ru) (tóščij)
• Swedish: mager (sv)

poor, deficient or inferior

• 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)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Norwegian: mager (no)
• Portuguese: pobre (pt)
• Russian: ску́дный (ru) (skúdnyj), бе́дный (ru) (bédnyj), ми́зерный (ru) (mízernyj)
• Spanish: pobre (es) m or f, escaso (es) m, escasa (es) f, deficiente (es) m or f

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)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• 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 *mh₂ḱros.

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