exiguous adj : extremely scanty; "an exiguous budget"

English

Etymology

From exiguus, "strict, exact," hence "scanty, meager," from exigere, "to measure against a standard."

Pronunciation

• /ɪɡˈzɪɡju.əs/ or /ɛɡˈzɪɡju.əs/
• /Ig"zIgju.@s/ or /Eg"zIgju.@s/

Adjective

1. Extremely scanty; meager.

Quotations

• 1889 — Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrong Box ch XIII

  The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous pipe.

• 1912 — G. K. Chesterton, Manalive ch VII

  The path on which I then planted my feet was quite unprecedentedly narrow. I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare so exiguous.

• 1998 — Michael Ignatieff, Rebirth of a Nation: An Anatomy of Russia. New Statesman, Feb 6.

  They are entering the market, setting up stalls on snowy streets, moonlighting to supplement exiguous incomes.

• ???? — Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography.

  Among the pressures provoking these distresses were a father's financial inadequacy and a growing awareness that, by finding employment himself, he could ameliorate the family's exiguous circumstances.

Translations

Derived terms

• exiguity
• exiguously
• exiguousness

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