(a.) 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.
(a.) Dry and harsh to the touch, as chalk.
(v. t.) To make lean.
(n.) A large European sciaenoid fish (Sciaena umbra or S. aquila), having white bloodless flesh. It is valued as a food fish.
Example Sentences:
(1) It has so far returned a mere $6m (£3.6m) of its relatively meagre $28m (£17.1m) budget, according to Forbes, a percentage of just 21%.
(2) Those who have escaped form a growing underclass of refugees on the Thai border, where they eke out a meagre living and face deportation at any time.
(3) As low interest rates erode the value of people's hard-earned savings, I would also like to see the chancellor allowing higher ISA limits, so that at least any meagre interest people do earn on their savings will not be taxed as well.
(4) With the eurozone unravelling and world markets in turmoil, threatening even the meagre recovery the UK economy had achieved since the onset of the credit crunch, he repeatedly evokes a mood of national emergency to explain why the coalition he forged with David Cameron is the right government for the times.
(5) The more you tour, the less your subsidy per seat.” That leads to lengthier tours, which keep actors away from their families for meagre weekly wages.
(6) Our own data and the meagre results of other studies support the supposition that it is not the absolute time-lapse which has prognostic significance but the qualified medical assistance provided within a critical, individual, but extremely variable time-span.
(7) Rats dying acutely of experimental auto-immune encephalomyelitis show very meagre histological signs of the disease in routine histology sections.
(8) Clinical benefits have so far been meagre but this is not surprising in view of the poor design of many of the trials and the large tumour burden in many of the patients.
(9) who was thinking about voting yes, and went on to reduce her political predicament to her meagre wage packet.
(10) Only by being filled out with private savings and pensions – whose value is also depressed by low bank rates – does a meagre state pension provide anything close to a tolerable retirement.
(11) These preliminary results are compared with those available in the relatively meagre literature.
(12) For the 600 hostages snacking on biscuits and chocolate, there is no sleep, no beds, no hot food, no hot drinks, no toilet paper, no washing facilities, a meagre supply of medicines - and, apparently, a deepening bond between the hostage takers and their victims.
(13) BBC1's National Lottery Draws followed Robin Hood with a meagre 1.6 million viewers and a 7% share over 10 minutes from 8.10pm.
(14) It may seem curmudgeonly to sprinkle our meagre daily measure of praise upon the negation of something: the fact that a plan is not going ahead.
(15) Whatever meagre income they earn can be the difference between going hungry and not, between surviving and not.
(16) Oxford’s Stranded Assets Programme report concluded that “divestment outflows, even when relatively meagre in the first wave of divestment, can significantly and permanently depress stock price of a target firm if they trigger a change in market norms”.
(17) His scholarship, no doubt, was meagre but he could read Greek with the help of a dictionary and a crib and he loved it - that may astonish.
(18) The ministry figures show exports to all regions falling, apart from a meagre 0.4% year-on-year gain in shipments to North America.
(19) The decision by the Equalities Commission to challenge the party's racist membership rules occupied too much of his attention, and drained the party's meagre resources.
(20) While the disease is age-related, more common in married than in single men and family-orientated, knowledge of specific aetiological factors is meagre.
(1) She says that the spread of insecure, short-term contracts and part-time work, together with benefits cuts and paltry wage growth, have meant that many people in work are struggling to make ends meet.
(2) Let’s leave that discussion to another day, but imagine a combination of the two – sort of Transformers meets Ex Machina – in which a race of giant sexy robots battles it out with another race of really mean giant sexy robots while paltry human beings look on in awe, and teenage boys (and girls) experience incredibly conflicting and disturbing sensual awakenings in the front row of the Beckenham Odeon.
(3) Only Orange's pay monthly deals come with Wi-Fi access and they only include a paltry 750MB of Wi-Fi browsing – again through BT Openzone's network of hotspots.
(4) In 2010 Bedder 6 paid out total dividends of £1.68m — which saw Clarkson pocket a comparatively paltry £850,000 when his share is calculated and his annual service payment is added in — meaning his income from Bedder 6 has almost tripled year on year.
(5) A paltry 50g of brown rice takes up over a third of your daily calorie count.
(6) By his own lofty standards Cavendish's return of two stage wins from this year's Tour has been paltry and myriad signs of hitherto unseen fallibility, a team that is clearly not good enough to work in his service and suggestions that his star is on the wane will leave him with much to ponder.
(7) If the recession results in interest rates remaining low for years, as many in the City are now predicting, then annuity rates will also remain at paltry levels.
(8) Frontex’s annual budget is a paltry €90m (£65m).
(9) Russia and China , meanwhile, have contributed a paltry $17.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively.
(10) It is the result of rejecting the world of public disengagement and laissez faire that delivered one paltry gold medal in Atlanta just 16 years ago.
(11) The value has now decreased slightly and their share probably sits at a paltry $10m.
(12) In 1959, US intelligence estimates suggested that the USSR would be in possession of between 1,000 and 1,500 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) compared to America’s paltry 100.
(13) Co-operative customer #3 is making do with a paltry state pension, subsidising the cost of groceries with a fortnightly package from the local food bank and unable to afford energy bills.
(14) The food industry spends over £1bn a year on marketing in the UK, compared with the paltry £14m spent on the government's anti-obesity campaign.
(15) The Italians are earning paltry returns from knocking out white goods in competition with the Chinese and Koreans.
(16) A paltry £1,000 for each marginal Labour candidate hardly buys a poster site.
(17) The sums are so paltry that the animus seems deliberate.
(18) As he itemises the contents of the pawnbroker's shop ("a few old China cups; some modern vases, adorned with paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully elevated in the air by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety …") you sense that Dickens barely knows how to stop.
(19) Yet he went on to pretend a paltry array of stimuli will fix the problem: he cannot possibly believe that loose change from the petty cash will arrest the plunge in employment and growth.
(20) Growth for the UK in 2012 will be a paltry 0.6%, the IMF says.