MEAGRE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does meagre mean? 

• MEAGRE (adjective)
  The adjective MEAGRE has 1 sense:

1. deficient in amount or quality or extent

  Familiarity information: MEAGRE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MEAGRE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deficient in amount or quality or extent

Synonyms:

meager; meagerly; meagre; scrimpy; stingy

Context example:

meager fare

Similar:

bare; scanty; spare (lacking in magnitude or quantity)

exiguous (extremely scanty)

hand-to-mouth (providing only bare essentials)

hardscrabble (barely satisfying a lower standard)

measly; miserable; paltry (contemptibly small in amount)

Also:

scarce (deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand)

minimal; minimum (the least possible)

deficient; insufficient (of a quantity not able to fulfill a need or requirement)

Attribute:

adequacy; sufficiency (the quality of being sufficient for the end in view)

Derivation:

meagreness (the quality of being meager)

 Context examples 

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Let me begin with facts—bare, meagre facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Here first, after the meagre fare of Beaulieu and the stinted board of the Lady Loring, Alleyne learned the lengths to which luxury and refinement might be pushed.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He turned and fled across the water-front, a meagre shadow in a flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up with him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The brutal years had reduced his meagre body to splintered wreckage, and yet the spark of life within burned brightly as ever.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

And now the sun went quite down; the gloomy night came; the owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and chin that almost met one another.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He heard hundreds of technical words that were new to him, belonging to fields of thought that his meagre reading had never touched upon.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)