meager
[mee-ger]
- deficient in quantity or quality; lacking fullness or richness; scanty; inadequate: a meager salary; meager fare; a meager harvest.
- having little flesh; lean; thin: a body meager with hunger.
- maigre.
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Also especially British, mea·gre.
Origin of meager
1300–50; Middle English megre < Old French maigre < Latin macer lean
Synonyms
See more synonyms for on Thesaurus.comDictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
paltrytenuousscantyminimumsparsemiserablescantinsufficientmerepunyskimpyslimscrimpybarebarrendeficientexiguousflimsyinfertileinsubstantialExamples from the Web for meager
Contemporary Examples
Especially in a country where the minimum wage is a meager $3.00 an hour.
Rising to retrieve it, I offer her what meager reassurance I can muster.
He called on his parents not to accept any “meager compensation” for his death.
Medieval Cruelty in Modern Times: ISIS Thugs Behead American JournalistChristopher Dickey
August 19, 2014
Look through that PDF I just linked to and feast on the meager amounts earmarked for democracy and assistance programs.
Personal consumption expenditures—people buying stuff—grew at a meager one percent rate in the first quarter.
Historical Examples
With his meager strength he assisted, and the two managed to lower the body gently.
Way of the LawlessMax Brand
Yet, his comment, meager as it was, stood wholly in Mary's favor.
Within the LawMarvin Dana
They were beautiful eyes, but the rest of Rose, oh, how pinched and meager!
Gloria and Treeless StreetAnnie Hamilton Donnell
It was part of my plan, this meager manning of the bandit ship.
The help they offered was meager, and slow, but it sufficed.
Under Arctic IceH.G. Winter
Word Origin and History for meager
adj.
late 14c. (late 12c. as a surname), "lean, thin, emaciated" (of persons or animals), from Old French megre, maigre "thin" (12c.), from Latin macrum (nominative macer) "lean, thin" (source of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian magro), from PIE *makro- (see macro-). Of material things (land, food, etc.) from early 15c. Cognate Germanic words (Old Norse magr "thin," Old High German magar, German mager, Middle Dutch magher, Dutch mager, Old English mæger) come directly from the PIE root via Proto-Germanic *magras and are not from Latin.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper