Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

meagre

UK /ˈmiːɡə/ · US /ˈmiːɡəɹ/ noun, adjective, verb

Also a form of meager

Forms meagres meagrer meagrest meagring meagred meager

  1. noun An edible fish, of species Argyrosomus regius, of the family Sciaenidae, found from the Black Sea to the eastern Atlantic.
  2. adjective Having little flesh; lean; thin.
  3. adjective Deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent “Nothing will grow in this meagre soil.”
  4. adjective (set theory) Of a set: such that, considered as a subset of a (usually larger) topological space, it is in a precise sense small or negligible.
  5. adjective (mineralogy) Dry and harsh to the touch (e.g., as chalk).
  6. verb (transitive) To make lean.

Synonyms

salmon-basse shadefish stone basse paltry scanty inadequate meager meagerly stingy scrimpy

Etymology

From Middle French maigre.

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”).

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Destitue of, or having little, flesh; lean.
  2. adjective 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. "Meager soil." Dryden.
  3. verb To make lean. [Obs.]
  4. noun A large European sciænoid fish (Sciæna umbra or S. aquila), having white bloodless flesh. It is valued as a food fish. [Written also maigre.]

Etymology [OE. merge, F. maigre, L. macer; akin to D. & G. mager, Icel. magr, and prob. to Gr. Emaciate, Maigre.]

Etymology [F. maigre.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “meagre”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details

Sanskrit

Sanskrit dictionary entries whose meaning includes “meagre” (best matches first).