meager

comparative meagerer · superlative meagerest · alternative Commonwealth meagre

1. CanadaUScommonHaving little flesh; lean; thin.
2. CanadaUScommonPoor, deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent

   A meager piece of cake in one bite.

   4 more examples

   The street outside my window furnishes meager entertainment.

   ...that begets many ugly and deformed phantasies in the braine, which being also hot and drie in the second extenuates and makes meager the body extraordinarily, ...

   1607, Thomas Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors, or, The touchstone of a golden temperature, or ..., page 54

   Nor none of thee thou pale and common drudge tween man and man: but thou, thou meager lead which rather threatnest then dost promise ought...

   1637, William Shakespeare, The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice: With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke..., page E5

   Making the run from Taipei to Panchiao every day to sell the gold-colored paper, he scraped together a meager livelihood.

   2002, Huang Chin-shing, Business as a Vocation: The Autobiography of Wu Ho-Su, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 26

   Synonyms: paltry, scanty, inadequate, measly, miserly, exiguous, Lenten

3. CanadaUScommonmathematicsOf a set: such that, considered as a subset of a (usually larger) topological space, it is in a precise sense small or negligible.

   Antonyms: dense

4. CanadaUScommonchemistryDry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).

present singular third person meagers · participle present meagering · participle past meagered · past meagered · alternative Commonwealth meagre

1. CanadaUScommontransitiveTo make lean.