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 Due to her meager food options, the animal is significantly underweight. —

Erin Clack, Peoplemag, 19 Sep. 2023 In the two years following the tax cuts, job growth was meager — 2.3 million new jobs in 2019, and 2 million in 2019. —

Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 18 Sep. 2023 But Philippe and six other Haitian mothers interviewed by CNN say support has been meager and conditional. —

David Blood, CNN, 15 Sep. 2023 In the ring with the much larger El Gigantico, El Topo tries to encourage his opponent to put on a show for the meager crowd, but the bigger man simply goes through the crude paces, exerting his brawn over the scrawny Saúl. —

Pat Padua, Washington Post, 13 Sep. 2023 Despite his meager stats, Harbaugh ended the season as the second-most efficient passer in the country after leading the Wolverines to a 10-1-1 record. —

Rainer Sabin, Detroit Free Press, 18 Aug. 2023 Since the strike began in July, actors have been voicing their concerns about the meager amounts reflected in their residual checks, with the majority of them falling below the $1.00 threshold. —

Shelby Stewart, Essence, 7 Aug. 2023 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 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)"