Poverty

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: pov=er=ty

CIDE DICTIONARY

Poverty, n. [OE. poverte, OF. poverté, F. pauvreté, fr. L. paupertas, fr. pauper poor. See Poor.].

•  The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need.  Keble.  [1913 Webster]

  "The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty."  [1913 Webster]
•  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.  [1913 Webster]

Poverty grass (Bot.), a name given to several slender grasses (as Aristida dichotoma, and Danthonia spicata) which often spring up on old and worn-out fields.

Syn. -- Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want; scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

Poverty, n.
1 the state of being poor; want of the necessities of life.
2 (often foll. by of, in) scarcity or lack.
3 inferiority, poorness, meanness.
4 Eccl. renunciation of the right to individual ownership of property.

Idiom

poverty line the minimum income level needed to secure the necessities of life. poverty-stricken extremely poor. poverty trap a situation in which an increase of income incurs a loss of State benefits, making real improvement impossible.

Etymology

ME f. OF poverte, povert{eacute} f. L paupertas -tatis f. pauper poor

DEVIL DICTIONARY

Poverty

n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about it. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.

THESAURUS

Poverty

beggary, dearth, destitution, difficulty, distress, embarrassment, exigency, hand-to-mouth existence, hardship, impecuniousness, impoverishment, inadequacy, indigence, insolvency, insufficiency, juncture, lack, mendicancy, necessity, need, neediness, pass, paucity, pauperism, pennilessness, penury, pinch, poorness, privation, rareness, rarity, scant, scant sufficiency, scantiness, scarceness, scarcity, shortage, sparseness, sparsity, strait, suffering, uncommonness, unprosperousness, want

ROGET THESAURUS

Poverty

Insufficiency

N insufficiency, inadequacy, inadequateness, incompetence, deficiency, imperfection, shortcoming, paucity, stint, scantiness, none to spare, bare subsistence, scarcity, dearth, want, need, lack, poverty, exigency, inanition, starvation, famine, drought, dole, mite, pittance, short allowance, short commons, half rations, banyan day, emptiness, poorness, depletion, vacancy, flaccidity, ebb tide, low water, a beggarly account of empty boxes, indigence, insolvency, drain of resources, impoverish, stint, put on short allowance, do insufficiently, scotch the snake, Adj, insufficient, inadequate, too little, not enough, unequal to, incompetent, weighed in the balance and found wanting, perfunctory, deficient, wanting imperfect, ill-furnished, ill-provided, ill- stored, ill-off, slack, at a low ebb, empty, vacant, bare, short of, out of, destitute of, devoid of, bereft of, denuded of, dry, drained, unprovided, unsupplied, unfurnished, unreplenished, unfed, unstored, untreasured, empty-handed, meager, poor, thin, scrimp, sparing, spare, stinted, starved, starving, halfstarved, famine-stricken, famished, jejune, scant, scarce, not to be had, not to be had for love or money, not to be had at any price, scurvy, stingy, at the end of one's tether, without resources, in want, in debt, insufficiently, in default of, for want of, failing, semper avarus eget.

Unimportance

N unimportance, insignificance, nothingness, immateriality, triviality, levity, frivolity, paltriness, poverty, smallness, vanity, matter of indifference, no object, nothing, nothing to signify, nothing worth speaking of, nothing particular, nothing to boast of, nothing to speak of, small matter, no great matter, trifling matter, mere joke, mere nothing, hardly anything, scarcely anything, nonentity, small beer, cipher, no great shakes, peu de chose, child's play, kinderspiel, toy, plaything, popgun, paper pellet, gimcrack, gewgaw, bauble, trinket, bagatelle, Rickshaw, knickknack, whim-wham, trifle, trifles light as air, yankee notions, trumpery, trash, rubbish, stuff, fatras, frippery, leather or prunello, chaff, drug, froth bubble smoke, cobweb, weed, refuse, scum, joke, jest, snap of the fingers, fudge, fiddlestick, fiddlestick end, pack of nonsense, mere farce, straw, pin, fig, button, rush, bulrush, feather, halfpenny, farthing, brass farthing, doit, peppercorn, jot, rap, pinch of snuff, old son, cent, mill, picayune, pistareen, red cent, minutiae, details, minor details, small fry, dust in the balance, feather in the scale, drop in the ocean, flea-bite, molehill, nine days' wonder, ridiculus mus, flash in the pan, much ado about nothing, unimportant, of little account, of small account, of no account, of little importance, of no importance, immaterial, unessential, nonessential, indifferent, subordinate, mediocre, passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace, uneventful, mere, common, ordinary, inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable, trifling, trivial, slight, slender, light, flimsy, frothy, idle, puerile, airy, shallow, weak, powerless, frivolous, petty, niggling, piddling, peddling, fribble, inane, ridiculous, farcical, finical, finikin, fiddle-faddle, fingle-fangle, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water, poor, paltry, pitiful, contemptible, sorry, mean, meager, shabby, miserable, wretched, vile, scrubby, scrannel, weedy, niggardly, scurvy, putid, beggarly, worthless, twopennyhalfpenny, cheap, trashy, catchpenny, gimcrack, trumpery, one- horse, not worth the pains, not worth while, not worth mentioning, not worth speaking of, not worth a thought, not worth a curse, not worth a straw, beneath notice, unworthy of notice, beneath regard, unworthy of regard, beneath consideration, unworthy of consideration, de lana caprina, vain, slightly, rather, somewhat, pretty well, tolerably, for aught one cares, Int, no matter!, pish!, tush!, tut!, pshaw!, pugh!, pooh, pooh-pooh!, fudge!, bosh!, humbug!, fiddlestick, fiddlestick end!, fiddlededee!, never mind!, n'importe!, what signifies it, what boots it, what of it, what of that, what matter, what's the odds, a fig for', stuff!, nonsense!, stuff and nonsense, magno conatu magnas nugas, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, it matters not, it does not signify, it is of no consequence, it is of no importance, elephantus non capit murem, tempete dans un verre d'eau.

Poverty

N poverty, indigence, penury, pauperism, destitution, want, need, neediness, lack, necessity, privation, distress, difficulties, wolf at the door, bad circumstances, poor circumstances, need circumstances, embarrassed circumstances, reduced circumstances, straightened circumstances, slender means, narrow means, straits, hand to mouth existence, res angusta domi, low water, impecuniosity, beggary, mendicancy, mendicity, broken fortune, loss of fortune, insolvency, empty pocket, empty purse, light purse, beggarly account of empty boxes, poor man, pauper, mendicant, mumper, beggar, starveling, pauvre diable, fakir, schnorrer, homeless person, poor, indigent, poverty-stricken, badly off, poorly off, ill off, poor as a rat, poor as a church mouse, poor as a Job, fortuneless, dowerless, moneyless, penniless, unportioned, unmoneyed, impecunious, out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash, without a rap, not worth a rap, qui n'a pas le sou, out of pocket, hard up, out at elbows, out at heels, seedy, bare-footed, beggarly, beggared, destitute, fleeced, stripped, bereft, bereaved, reduced, homeless, in want, needy, necessitous, distressed, pinched, straitened, put to one's shifts, put to one's last shifts, unable to keep the wolf from the door, unable to make both ends meet, embarrassed, under hatches, involved, insolvent, in forma pauperis, zonam perdidit, a penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree, a pobreza no hay verguenza, he that is down can fall no lower, poca roba poco pensiero, steeped, in poverty to the very lips, the short and simple annals of the poor.