meagre

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   An edible fish, of species Argyrosomus regius, of the family Sciaenidae, found from the Black Sea to the eastern Atlantic.

   1986, A. Wysokiński, The Living Marine Resources of the Southeast Atlantic, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 178, page 48, Among more valuable species some of them are worth mentioning, especially littoral forms as: meagres and other croakers (Sciaenidae), grunters (Pomadasyidae), threadfins (Polynemidae), groupers (Serranidae), snappers (Lutjanidae) […] .

2. 2
   adj

   Having little flesh; lean; thin.

   […]meagre were his looks; / Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:.

3. 3
   adj

   Deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent

   Nothing will grow in this meagre soil.

4. 4
   verb

   To make lean.

   I am meagred to a skeleton; my nose is broiled to flaming heat, and I am suffering the greatest inconvenience from the loss of my baggage which I fear the enemy have taken with my servant at Konigsberg.

From Middle English megre, borrowed from Anglo-Norman megre, Old French maigre, from Latin macer, macrum, from Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱrós. Cognate with Old English mæġer (“meagre, lean”), Dutch mager (“lean”), German mager (“lean”), Icelandic magur (“lean”).

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