Adjective: meager
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | meagerer |
| Superlative | meagerest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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A meager piece of cake in one bite.
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The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.
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...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:]
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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:]
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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:]
Adjectives inflected like meager
sallow,
smooth,
slight,
sleigh,
sordid,
somber,
shweet,
shrill,
shrewd,
yellow,
yaller,
hard knock,
DRY,
Greek,
cut short,
unquiet,
unclean,
indiscreet,
chipper,
straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. 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,
2. Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager. Doublet of maigre. See: Latin Adjectives '
macer', Dutch Adjectives '
mager', German Adjectives '
mager'.
Verbs referencing "meager"
Latin Adjectives
macer.