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meager. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
meager, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
meager in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
meager you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Alternative forms
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
Adjective
meager (comparative meagerer, superlative meagerest) (American spelling) (Canadian spelling, common)
- Having little flesh; lean; thin.
- 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 ..., 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..., 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...
- (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
- (mineralogy) Dry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).
Synonyms
Derived terms
Descendants
Translations
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)
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Translations to be checked
Verb
meager (third-person singular simple present meagers, present participle meagering, simple past and past participle meagered)
- (American spelling, transitive) To make lean.
Anagrams
West Frisian
Etymology
From Old Frisian *māger, from Proto-Germanic *magraz, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱrós.
Adjective
meager
- skinny, not well fed
- lean, lacking in fat
Inflection
Further reading
- “meager”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011