meager

1 of 2

adjective

mea·​ger ˈmē-gər How to pronounce meager (audio)
variants or meagre
Synonyms of meager
1
: having little flesh : thin
… meager were his looks, sharp misery had worn him to the bones …—William Shakespeare
2
a
: lacking desirable qualities (such as richness or strength)
leading a meager life
b
: deficient in quality or quantity
a meager diet
meagerly adverb
meagerness noun

meagerness

2 of 2

noun

mea·​ger·​ness
plural -es
1
: the quality or state of being meager
meagerness of expression
2
: something meager
remembering these meagernesses and penny-pinchings

Synonyms of meager

Relevance

Adjective

See All Synonyms & Antonyms in Thesaurus
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

Adjective 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
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Adjective
Nix threw for just 107 yards five days after managing a meager 123 against the Chargers. — ABC News, 16 Oct. 2026 Three in college, and four later, gambling with the delicate calibration that exists between a meager bone density—after four years of iron deficiency, amenorrhea, and a propensity for fracturing—and a need for running like breathing, like air. — Literary Hub, 15 Oct. 2026 Her meager income supports Kumari and her three siblings at home (an older sister has married and moved out). — Kamala Thiagarajan, NPR, 11 Oct. 2026 Until the 1960s, most public-school funding was derived from local sources, leaving poor areas with meager resources. — Colin Pascal, Baltimore Sun, 8 Oct. 2026 See All Example Sentences for meager

Word History

Etymology

Adjective

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)"

Note: Alternatively from Indo-European *maḱ- if a is accepted as a vowel, as the laryngeal h2 is invoked solely to produce the right vocalism.

First Known Use

Adjective

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of meager was in the 14th century

Rhymes for meager

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Browse Nearby Words

meadowy
meager
meager lime
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Cite this Entry

“Meager.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meager. Accessed 22 Oct. 2026.

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Kids Definition

meager

adjective
mea·​ger
variants or meagre
ˈmē-gər How to pronounce meager (audio)
1
: having little flesh : thin
2
a
: lacking desirable qualities (as richness or strength)
led a meager life
b
: deficient in quality or quantity
a meager serving of meat
meagerly adverb
meagerness noun
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