meager

adjective

mea·ger ˈmē-gər

variants or meagre

Synonyms of meager next

: having little flesh : thin

meager were his looks, sharp misery had worn him to the bones—

William Shakespeare

: lacking desirable qualities (such as richness or strength)

leading a meager life

: deficient in quality or quantity

a meager diet

meagerly adverb

meagerness noun

Choose the Right Synonym for meager

meager, scanty, scant, skimpy, spare, sparse mean falling short of what is normal, necessary, or desirable.

meager implies the absence of elements, qualities, or numbers necessary to a thing's richness, substance, or potency.

a meager portion of meat

scanty stresses insufficiency in amount, quantity, or extent.

supplies too scanty to last the winter

scant suggests a falling short of what is desired or desirable rather than of what is essential.

in January the daylight hours are scant

skimpy usually suggests niggardliness or penury as the cause of the deficiency.

tacky housing developments on skimpy lots

spare may suggest a slight falling short of adequacy or merely an absence of superfluity.

a spare, concise style of writing

sparse implies a thin scattering of units.

a sparse population

Examples of meager in a Sentence

Every morning he eats a meager breakfast of toast and coffee. We'll have to do the best we can with this year's meager harvest. She came to this country with a fairly meager English vocabulary, but she is learning more words every day. They suffered through several meager years at the beginning of their marriage. Although she's now rich and famous, she remembers her meager beginnings as a child from a poor family.

Recent Examples on the Web Those numbers have dipped in the last two seasons, the Hoosiers managing a meager 22 fumbles plus interceptions across 2021 and 2022. —

Zach Osterman, The Indianapolis Star, 4 Sep. 2023 Perhaps most encouraging of all, Rice could not move the ball on the ground at all, managing a meager 27 rushing yards on 25 carries as a team. —

Corey Smith, Dallas News, 2 Sep. 2023 Sharing photos of one's meager meals, even as a joke, can be problematic for some viewers, Dr. Jessica Saunders, an assistant professor of psychology at Ramapo College of New Jersey who specializes in body image and eating disorders, told Women's Health. —

Theara Coleman, The Week, 23 Aug. 2023 Aggro Crab’s announcement stands in sharp contrast to 2022’s Elden Ring, which represented a step back in From Software’s already meager consideration of accessibility. —

WIRED, 2 Aug. 2023 Reviews have been meager, turning in a 27% approval rating from top critics on aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. —

Michaela Zee, Variety, 12 Aug. 2023 Chinese households have long been some of the most prodigious savers on earth, owing to the fact that social safety nets are meager. —

Peter S. Goodman, New York Times, 11 Aug. 2023 Sylvia Batey Alcalá, a SAG member since 2008, has received meager residuals for streaming services, like Amazon Freevee, as well. —

Kalia Richardson, Rolling Stone, 8 Aug. 2023 From there, Molly and Phil battle thieves, wolves, illness and an unforgiving terrain across a sightseeing tour of Alaska that does more to sell Alaska itself than the meager plot. —

David Reamer | Alaska History, Anchorage Daily News, 30 July 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'meager.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Middle English megre "thin, having little flesh from lack of food," borrowed from Anglo-French megre, maigre, going back to Latin macr-, macer "thin, lean, of little substance," going back to Indo-European *mh₂ḱ-ro- "long, thin," whence also Germanic *magra- "lean" (whence Old English mæger "lean," Old High German magar, Old Norse magr), Greek makrós "long, tall, high, large"; derivative in *-ro-, adjective suffix, of a base *meh₂ḱ-, *mh₂ḱ- seen also in Latin maciēs "bodily thinness, wasting," Greek mêkos "length," mḗkistos "longest, highest," Avestan masah- "length, greatness," masišta- "highest," Hittite maklant- "thin, slim (of animals)"