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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

meager.

Having little flesh; lean; thin.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈmiɡɚ/General-American/ˈmiːɡə/Received-Pronunciation
  1. Having little flesh; lean; thin.

    Canada · US · common
  2. Poor, deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent

    Canada · US · common
    A meager piece of cake in one bite.
    The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.
  3. Of a set: such that, considered as a subset of a (usually larger) topological space, it is in a precise sense small or negligible.

    Canada · US · common
  4. Dry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).

    Canada · US · common
Where this word comes from

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, Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager. Doublet of maigre.

verb/ˈmiɡɚ/General-American/ˈmiːɡə/Received-Pronunciation
  1. To make lean.

    Canada · US · common · transitive
Where this word comes from

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, Norwegian Bokmål mager and Danish mager. Doublet of maigre.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.