MEAGRENESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does meagreness mean? 

• MEAGRENESS (noun)
  The noun MEAGRENESS has 1 sense:

1. the quality of being meager

  Familiarity information: MEAGRENESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MEAGRENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being meager

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

exiguity; leanness; meagerness; meagreness; poorness; scantiness; scantness

Context example:

an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes

Hypernyms ("meagreness" is a kind of...):

deficiency; inadequacy; insufficiency (lack of an adequate quantity or number)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "meagreness"):

wateriness (meagerness or poorness connoted by a superfluity of water (in a literary style as well as in a food))

abstemiousness (restricted to bare necessities)

spareness; sparseness; sparsity; thinness (the property of being scanty or scattered; lacking denseness)

Derivation:

meagre (deficient in amount or quality or extent)

 Context examples 

Fanny's disposition was such that she could never even think of her aunt Norris in the meagreness and cheerlessness of her own small house, without reproaching herself for some little want of attention to her when they had been last together; much less could her feelings acquit her of having done and said and thought everything by William that was due to him for a whole fortnight.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Of the meagreness of a child’s life? of fish diet and coarse living? of going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of myself, unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage, where kicks and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul-experiences? I do not care to remember.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)