penury

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: pen=u=ry

CIDE DICTIONARY

penury, n. [L. penuria; cf. Gr. hunger, poverty, need, one who works for his daily bread, a poor man, to work for one's daily bread, to be poor: cf. F. pénurie.].

•  Absence of resources; want; privation; indigence; extreme poverty; destitution.  Bacon.  [1913 Webster]

  "They were exposed to hardship and penury."  [1913 Webster]

  "It arises in neither from penury of thought."  [1913 Webster]
•  Penuriousness; miserliness.  Jer. Taylor.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

penury, n. (pl. -ies)
1 destitution; poverty.
2 a lack; scarcity.

Etymology

ME f. L penuria, perh. rel. to paene almost

THESAURUS

penury

bare cupboard, bare subsistence, beggarliness, beggary, deprivation, destitution, empty purse, grinding poverty, gripe, hand-to-mouth existence, homelessness, impecuniousness, impoverishment, indigence, lack, mendicancy, moneylessness, necessitousness, necessity, need, neediness, pauperism, pauperization, pinch, poorness, privation, want

ROGET THESAURUS

penury

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.