Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The state of being poor; lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts.
- noun Deficiency in amount; scantiness.
- noun Unproductiveness; infertility.
- noun Renunciation made by a member of a religious order of the right to own property.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state or condition of being poor; need or scarcity of means of subsistence; needy circumstances; indigence; penury.
- noun The quality of being poor; a lack of necessary or desirable elements, constituents, or qualities.
- noun Lack of richness of tone; thinness (of sound).
- noun Dearth; scantiness; small allowance.
- noun Poor things; objects or productions of little value.
- noun The poor; poor people collectively. Compare
the quality , used for persons of quality. - noun Synonyms Poverty, Want, Indigence, Penury, Destitution, Pauperism, Need, neediness, necessitousness, privation, beggary. Poverty is a strong word, stronger than being poor; want is still stronger, indicating that one has not even the necessaries of life: indigence is often stronger than want, implying especially, also, the lack of those things to which one has been used and that befit one's station; penury is poverty that is severe to abjectness; destitution is the state of having absolutely nothing; pauperism is a poverty by which one is thrown upon public charity for support; need is a general word, definite only in suggesting the necessity for immediate relief. None of these words is limited to the lack of property, although that is naturally a prominent fact under each.
- noun and Meagerness, jejuneness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need.
- noun Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness
- noun (Bot.) a name given to several slender grasses (as
Aristida dichotoma , andDanthonia spicata ) which often spring up on old and worn-out fields.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The quality or state of being poor or
indigent ; want orscarcity of means ofsubsistence ; indigence; need. - noun Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil; poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The species of poverty, most esteemed by Religion, is _poverty of mind_.
Good Sense Paul Henri Thiry Holbach 1756
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The Arabs say: '_God preserve us from overwhelming poverty; and from the company of him whom he loves not, namely, the infidel_': -- And there is a tradition of the prophet -- that '_poverty has a gloomy aspect in this world and in the next_!'"
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Still, it strikes me as odd that conservatives seem so convinced that a set of countries whose populations are healthier and longer-lived, and where dramatically fewer children grow up in poverty, is somehow obviously a dystopian nightmare.
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I am not arguing that having new immigrant families and young families start out in poverty is morally satisfactory.
Kling vs. Lang, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Re: and where dramatically fewer children grow up in poverty, is somehow obviously a dystopian nightmare.
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The Chávez-influenced states are largely poor; the percentage of people living in poverty is more than 60 percent in Bolivia.
The New World Order 2010
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Census Bureau figures indicate the number of Americans in poverty is the highest in more than half a century.
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Having a safety net to take care of people in poverty is important.
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Census Bureau figures indicate the number of Americans in poverty is the highest in more than half a century.
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In the United States to-day there are fifteen million8 people living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained.
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Access to menstrual products is, unfortunately, not universal, and period poverty – not being able to afford the needed menstrual products – is a real concern worldwide.
Opinion: Lifting the curse: On the historical, pervasive shaming of menstruation Jen Gunter 2024
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Access to menstrual products is, unfortunately, not universal, and period poverty – not being able to afford the needed menstrual products – is a real concern worldwide.
Opinion: Lifting the curse: On the historical, pervasive shaming of menstruation Jen Gunter 2024
oroboros commented on the word poverty
Proper revolutionary "poverty" is not in simply not having useless stuff, but in not even wanting it. "Jeeze", said Fred Everybody, "That's asking a lot!"
--Jan Cox
April 6, 2007
npydyuan commented on the word poverty
"Poverty isn't anything to be ashamed of."
"Great heavens! Have you the temerity to get off that old nonsensical remark? Poverty is everything to be ashamed of. Did you ever see a person not ashamed of his poverty? Certainly not. Of course, when a man gets very rich he will brag so loudly of the poverty of his youth that one would never suppose that he was once ashamed of it. But he was."
Stephen Crane, The Third Violet
September 22, 2007
reesetee commented on the word poverty
Npydyuan, let me guess--you're reading The Third Violet on Project Gutenberg! ;-)
Sounds like fun. I may do the same.
September 22, 2007
npydyuan commented on the word poverty
Yes... I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the way the guys harangue and cuss at each other, but it all still sounds so civilised. Anyway, I finished it, so I'll stop inundating all these words with Crane quotations, for a while at least.
September 22, 2007
reesetee commented on the word poverty
Oh, but it's entertaining! Please, quote all you want. :-) And Stephen Crane's a great choice, too.
September 22, 2007