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Poverty   /pˈɑvərti/   Listen
noun
Poverty  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need. "Swathed in numblest poverty." "The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty."
2.
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.
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.
Synonyms: Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want; scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness. Poverty, Indigence, Pauperism. Poverty is a relative term; what is poverty to a monarch, would be competence for a day laborer. Indigence implies extreme distress, and almost absolute destitution. Pauperism denotes entire dependence upon public charity, and, therefore, often a hopeless and degraded state.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Poverty" Quotes from Famous Books



... with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore; but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and charity." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... nor a tough one. Goose Island, the stock yards, the Bohemian district, the lumber yards, the factories,—all the aspects of the city monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with its picturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,—not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved and cleaned, it would be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... the blind, and that all able-bodied men appearing in dervish garb were to be seized for military service. The profession fell out of fashion then, and there are now comparatively few mendicant dervishes to be seen. Those that still wear the 'ragged robe' do not all appear to follow the rules of poverty, self-denial, abstinence, and celibacy. One there was, a negro from 'darkest Africa,' who attached himself as a charity-pensioner to the British Legation in Tehran, and was to be seen in all weathers, snow and sunshine, fantastically dressed, chattering ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... been produced in manuscript by students and other persons of experience in special fields of practice which have never yet been put into type, and perhaps never will, solely because of the poverty of their writers or of the disinclination of publishers in general to take hold of books which do not at the start promise a remuneration. The late Professor Sophocles of Harvard College, left in MS. a Lexicon of Modern Greek ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... forgot to look down upon the poorer classes of the English population, upon whose daily and yearly labor the great establishments they so much admired were sustained and supported. They failed to perceive that the scantily fed and half-clad operatives were not only in abject poverty, but were bound in chains of oppressive servitude for the benefit of favored classes, who were the exclusive objects of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson


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