meager

adjective

mea·​ger ˈmē-gər 

variants or meagre

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

Synonyms of meager

• sparse
• scarce
• poor

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

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

Yet Germany’s meager amount of uranium ore had been divided between different piles in the project. — Mike McRae 06, New Atlas, 6 Oct. 2026

In 2022, some 138 million urban retirees drew an average pension of $6,080 per year, roughly 18 times more than the meager $345 received by China’s 175 million rural and migrant retirees. — Carl Minzner, Foreign Affairs, 5 Oct. 2026

Amid so much belabored meanness, meager appeals to conscience scan more like self-conscious obligation, easily subsumed by impotence. — Literary Hub, 1 Oct. 2026

While AirPods released in the past 10 years have received a 0/10 rating from iFixit, the AirPods 5 released earlier this month got a meager bump to 2/10. — Jibin Joseph, PC Magazine, 30 Sep. 2026

Word History

Etymology

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

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for meager

• eager
• leaguer
• meagre
• segar

Kids Definition

meager

adjective

mea·​ger

variants or meagre

ˈmē-gər 

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