Plenty vs Meager - What's the difference?
plenty | meager |
A more than adequate amount.
* 1798 , (Thomas Malthus), (An Essay on the Principle of Population):
More than sufficiently.
(label) , very.
* 26 June 2014 , A.A Dowd, AV Club Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler spoof rom-com clichés in They Came Together [http://www.avclub.com/review/paul-rudd-and-amy-poehler-spoof-rom-com-cliches-th-206220]
(label) much, enough
(label) many
(label) plentiful
* 1597 , Shakespeare, Henry IV , Part I, Act I, Scene IV:
* 1836 , The American Gardener's Magazine and Register , volume 2, page 279:
Having little flesh; lean; thin.
Poor, deficient or inferior in amount, quality or extent; paltry; scanty; inadequate; unsatisfying.
* {{quote-book
, year=1607
, author=Thomas Walkington
, title=The Optick Glasse of Humors, or, The touchstone of a golden temperature, or ...
, page=54
* {{quote-book
, year=1637
, author=William Shakespeare
, title=The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice: With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke ...
, page=E5
As a proper noun plenty
is a village in saskatchewan, canada.As an adjective meager is
having little flesh; lean; thin.As a verb meager is
to make lean.plenty
English
Noun
- We are lucky to live in a land of peace and plenty .
- During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage
Usage notes
While some dictionaries analyse this word as a noun, others analyse it as a pronoun,Macmillan]or as both a noun and a pronoun.[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/plenty oxforddictionaries.comHarrap's essential English Dictionary'' (1996)''Heinemann English Dictionary (2001)
Derived terms
* horn of plenty * land of plenty * plenteous * plentifulSynonyms
* abundance * profusionUsage notes
See the notes about the noun.Adverb
(-)- This office is plenty big enough for our needs.
- She was plenty mad at him.
- Seeing clichés mimicked this skillfully is plenty hilarious.
Determiner
(en determiner)- There'll be plenty time later for that
- Get a manicure. Plenty men do it.
Adjective
(en adjective)- if reasons were as plenty as blackberries
- Radishes are very plenty . Of cabbages a few heads of this year's crop have come to hand this week, and sold readily at quotations; [...]
Anagrams
*meager
English
(wikipedia meager)Alternative forms
* meagre (Commonwealth English)Adjective
(er)- A meager piece of cake in one bite.
citation, passage=...that begets many ugly and deformed phantasies in the braine, which being also hot and drie in the second extenuates and makes meager the body extraordinarily, ...}}
citation, passage=Nor none of thee thou pale and common drudge tween man and man: but thou, thou meager lead which rather threatnest then dost promise ought...}}
