Word.ws English Dictionary

meager

Syllables: mea·gerUK/ˈmiːɡə//ˈmiɡɚ/

meager adjective: having little flesh; lean; thin.

Adjective

meager (comparative meagerer, superlative meagerest)

  1. (Canada, US, common) Having little flesh; lean; thin.
  2. (Canada, US, common) Poor, deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent
    • A meager piece of cake in one bite.
    • The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.
  3. (Canada, US, common) Of a set: such that, considered as a subset of a (usually larger) topological space, it is in a precise sense small or negligible.
    Antonyms:
    dense
  4. (Canada, US, common) Dry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).

Verb

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

  1. (Canada, US, common, transitive) To make lean.

meager meaning in Tamil, Bengali and Arabic

meager in Tamil

சொற்பமான, தேவைக்குக் குறைவான, சதை அற்ற, மெலிந்த

meager in Bengali

অল্প, সামান্য, নগণ্য, কৃশ

meager in Arabic

lean
ضَئِيل ḍaʔīl

Examples of meager in a sentence

  • ...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, ...1607, Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors, or, The touchstone of a golden temperature, or ..., page 54:
  • 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...1637, William Shakespeare, The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice: With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke..., page E5:
  • Making the run from Taipei to Panchiao every day to sell the gold-colored paper, he scraped together a meager livelihood.2002, Huang Chin-shing, Business as a Vocation: The Autobiography of Wu Ho-Su, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 26:

All 23 example sentences with meager

Synonyms of meager

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of meager

Forms of meager

Adjective
comparativemeagerer
superlativemeagerest
alternative Commonwealthmeagre
Verb
third-person singular presentmeagers
present participlemeagering
past participlemeagered
pastmeagered

Origin of meager

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, Old Norse magr whence the Icelandic magur, Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager. Doublet of maigre.

Words formed from meager

Words that rhyme with meager

Questions about meager

What does meager mean?
Meager means having little flesh; lean; thin.
What is meager in Tamil?
Meager in Tamil is சொற்பமான, தேவைக்குக் குறைவான, சதை அற்ற. See Meager meaning in Tamil.
How do you use meager in a sentence?
...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, ...
What part of speech is meager?
Meager can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce meager?
Meager is pronounced /ˈmiɡɚ/ (US).

Words near meager in the dictionary

  1. meadwort
  2. meady
  3. Meaford
  4. Meagain
  5. Meagan
  6. meager
  7. meagered
  8. meagerer
  9. meagerest
  10. meagering
  11. meagerly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: meager (page history and authors); meager (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Meager (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

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Cite this entry: “meager.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/meager. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.