Which to use
“meager” is an adjective and “meagre” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #27,213
- “meager” frequency rank
- #34,584
- “meagre” frequency rank
- 61797
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | meager | meagre |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Having little flesh; lean; thin. | An edible fish, of species Argyrosomus regius, of the family Sciaenidae, found from the Black Sea to the eastern Atlantic. |
Same sound, different letters: meager vs meagre
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. meager (CVVCVC) and meagre (CVVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Ear matches; page differs - meager and meagre
Say them out loud and nothing separates them: meager and meagre carry the same recorded pronunciation, /ˈmiɡɚ/. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other anoun, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (er ↔ re) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61797, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
meager is recorded at frequency rank #27,213, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈmiɡɚ/. meagre is at rank #34,584, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmiːɡɚ/.
Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.
With a confusion score of 61797, this pair ranks #92,156 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of meager vs meagre
Shared letters: aegmr. Private to "meager": -. Private to "meagre": -.
"meager" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC · "meagre" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "meager" and "meagre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "meager" or "meagre"?
What to do next
"meager" and "meagre" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "meager" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "meagre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #92,156 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "meager" and "meagre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meagre vs Mears". Nearby pair
- Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes
Confusion rank #92,156 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.