POVERTY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Poverty

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/pˈɑvərti/ Listen

noun

Poverty n.

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."

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.

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Etymology of 'Poverty'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Poverty" Quotes from Famous Books

... the true remedy lies with Congress at all. I do not question the right to demand of Congress any thing, but I do doubt the propriety or need of such a proceeding, of course, in the case under consideration. As to "that kind which sends poor white boys to Coventry," because of their poverty, etc., I can say with absolute truthfulness it no longer exists. When it did exist the power to discontinue it did not lie with Congress. Congress has no control over personal whims or prejudices. But I make a slight mistake. There was a time when influence, wealth, ...

— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... service to his people in their every need, from the building of roads to the organization and teaching of schools. It would have been impossible for Oberlin to have served these people through preaching alone. Being a mature community, indeed old in suffering and in poverty, they needed the ministry of a pastor, and this service he rendered them in the immersion of his life with theirs, and the bearing of their burdens, even the most material and economic burden of ...

— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... student in common parlance will express his destitution or poverty by saying, "I have not a bowel." The use of the word with this signification has arisen, probably, from a jocular reference to a ...

— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... hope anger virtue bread diplomacy milk carpet man death sincerity telescope mountain poverty Senate novel. ...

— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... same direction; her commercial interests are rapidly progressing, but her peasantry is at a standstill, France and Italy have already grown a fat bourgeoisie, but their workers remain in a limbo of poverty and strikes. And in all these countries, including Germany, Socialism has arisen as a protest against the commercial order—which fact certainly does not look as if commercialism ...

— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

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