MEAGER • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Meager

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/mˈigər/ Listen

adjective

Meagre, Meager adj.

Destitue of, or having little, flesh; lean. "Meager were his looks; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones."

Destitute of richness, fertility, strength, or the like; defective in quantity, or poor in quality; poor; barren; scanty in ideas; wanting strength of diction or affluence of imagery; as, meager resources; meager fare. Opposite of ample. (Narrower terms: exiguous) (Narrower terms: hardscrabble, marginal) (Narrower terms: measly, miserable, paltry) "Meager soil."

Synonyms: meagre, meagerly, scanty. "Of secular habits and meager religious belief." "His education had been but meager."

(Min.) Dry and harsh to the touch, as chalk.

Less than a desirable amount; of items distributed from a larger supply.

Synonyms: scrimpy, skimpy, skimping.

Synonyms: Thin; lean; lank; gaunt; starved; hungry; poor; emaciated; scanty; barren.

verb

Meagre, Meager v. t. To make lean. (Obs.)

See images of 'Meager'

Etymology of 'Meager'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Meager" Quotes from Famous Books

... early became the head of a North African empire, and her fleets plied in all navigable waters known to antiquity. Her navy was the largest in the world, and in the sea-fight with Regulus comprised three hundred and fifty vessels, carrying one hundred and fifty thousand men. Though we have but meager accounts of the internal affairs of Carthage, there can be no doubt that much attention was given, both at home and in the colonies, to the construction of highways, which were distinguished for their solidity. It is said that ...

— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... allied with him, and his son, Victor Emmanuel, succeeded him. As to what took place ten years later, when the Austrians were finally expelled from Lombardy, and the transitory sovereigns of the duchies and of Naples flitted for good, and the Pope's dominion was reduced to the meager size it kept till 1871, and the Italian states were united under one constitutional king—I ...

— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... more advanced governments of my day, by their poor laws and pauper systems, in a dim way admitted this responsibility, although the kind of provision they made for the economically unfortunate was so meager and accompanied with such conditions of ignominy that men would ordinarily rather die than accept it. But grant that the sort of recognition we gave of the right of the citizen to be guaranteed a subsistence was a mockery more brutal ...

— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... of yellow soap, a bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and meager curtains. He next threw down the bear skins, with the empty sack under them, in an unoccupied corner; propped up the leather bag between two angles of the wall; took his pipe from the floor; left everything else lying ...

— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... he has a clue—a meager and unsatisfactory one, he admits—and to-day sent officers to Ganlook to investigate the actions of a strange man who was there last week, a man who styled himself the Count of Arabazon, and who claimed to be of Vienna. Some Austrians had been hunting stags ...

— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

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