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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Meager \Mea"ger\, Meagre \Mea"gre\, adjective [OE. merge, F. maigre, L. macer; akin to D. & G. mager, Icel. magr, and prob. to Gr. makro's long. Cf. {Emaciate}, {Maigre}.]
1. Destitue of, or having little, flesh; lean.
Meager were his looks; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones. --Shak.
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}. [WordNet sense 1] [Narrower terms: {exiguous}] [Narrower terms: {hardscrabble, marginal}] [Narrower terms: {measly, miserable, paltry}] ''Meager soil.'' --Dryden.
Syn: meagre, meagerly, scanty.
Of secular habits and meager religious belief. --I. Taylor.
His education had been but meager. --Motley.
3. (Min.) Dry and harsh to the touch, as chalk.
4. less than a desirable amount; -- of items distributed from a larger supply. [WordNet sense 2]
Syn: scrimpy, skimpy, skimping. [WordNet 1.5]
Syn: Thin; lean; lank; gaunt; starved; hungry; poor; emaciated; scanty; barren.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Exiguous \Ex*ig"u*ous\, adjective [L. exiguus.] Scanty; small; slender; diminutive. [R.] ''Exiguous resources.'' --Carlyle. -- {Ex*ig"uous*ness}, noun [R.]
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
exiguous
adjective: extremely scanty; "an exiguous budget"
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
74 Moby Thesaurus words for "exiguous": Lenten, Spartan, abstemious, ascetic, austere, cheeseparing, chinchy, chintzy, cramped, dinky, dwarfed, dwarfish, frugal, half-pint, impoverished, infrequent, jejune, knee-high, lean, limited, little, meager, mean, miserly, narrow, niggardly, one-horse, paltry, parsimonious, petite, piddling, pindling, pint-sized, poky, poor, puny, rare, scant, scanty, scarce, scattered, scrawny, scrimp, scrimping, scrimpy, seldom met with, seldom seen, short, skimp, skimping, skimpy, slender, slight, slim, small, smallish, spare, sparing, sparse, spotty, sprinkled, starvation, stingy, stinted, straitened, stunted, subsistence, thin, tight, two-by-four, unnourishing, unnutritious, watered, watery
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