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Meagre   Listen
adjective
Meagre, Meager  adj.  
1.
Destitue of, or having little, flesh; lean. "Meager were his looks; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones."
2.
Destitute of richness, fertility, strength, or the like; defective in quantity, or poor in quality; poor; barren; scanty in ideas; wanting strength of diction or affluence of imagery; as, meager resources; meager fare. Opposite of ample. (Narrower terms: exiguous) (Narrower terms: hardscrabble, marginal) (Narrower terms: measly, miserable, paltry) "Meager soil."
Synonyms: meagre, meagerly, scanty. "Of secular habits and meager religious belief." "His education had been but meager."
3.
(Min.) Dry and harsh to the touch, as chalk.
4.
Less than a desirable amount; of items distributed from a larger supply.
Synonyms: scrimpy, skimpy, skimping.
Synonyms: Thin; lean; lank; gaunt; starved; hungry; poor; emaciated; scanty; barren.



noun
Meagre  n.  (Written also maigre)  (Zool.) A large European sciaenoid fish (Sciaena umbra or Sciaena aquila), having white bloodless flesh. It is valued as a food fish.



verb
Meagre, Meager  v. t.  To make lean. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books



... a love of hasty generalization, but by a divine instinct, a dialectical enthusiasm, in which the human faculties seemed to yearn for enlargement. We know that 'being' is only the verb of existence, the copula, the most general symbol of relation, the first and most meagre of abstractions; but to some of the ancient philosophers this little word appeared to attain divine proportions, and to comprehend all truth. Being or essence, and similar words, represented to them a supreme or divine being, in which they thought that they ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... in the prison was a Frenchman, though probably the most remarkable. He was about sixty years of age, of the middle stature, but thin and meagre, like most of his countrymen; he had a villainously-formed head, according to all the rules of craniology, and his features were full of evil expression. He wore no hat, and his clothes, though in appearance nearly new, were of the coarsest description. He generally ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... considerable power. The shock of Frederic's military successes made him suddenly drop the pen with which he had been inditing Anacreontics, and weak, rhymeless Horatian moods. His grenadier-songs, though often meagre and inflated, and marked with the literary vices of the time, do still account for the great fame which they acquired, as they went marching with the finest army that Europe ever saw. Here is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... all men, dying rich—actually rich. The professor pulls his beard, and involuntarily glances round the somewhat meagre apartment, that not all his learning, not all his success in the scientific world—and it has been not unnoteworthy, so far—has enabled him to improve upon. It has helped him to live, no doubt, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford

... Cases was busily employed, and obtained a sight of his journal, with which he was not displeased. He, however, noticed that some of the military details and anecdotes gave but a meagre idea of the subject of war: This first led to the proposal of his writing his own Memoirs. At length the Emperor came to a determination, and on Saturday, the 9th of September he called his secretary into his cabin and dictated to him some particulars of the siege of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton


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