poverty

From Middle English poverte, from Old French poverté (Modern French pauvreté), from Latin paupertās, from pauper (“poor”) + -tas (“noun of state suffix”). Cognates include pauper, poor.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɒvəti/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑːvɚti/

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poverty (usually uncountable, plural poverties)

1. The quality or state of being poor; lack of money quotations ▼

   get into poverty

   get out of poverty

   escape from poverty

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 329, about Queniborough:

     From there Prince Rupert, the Royalist general and nephew of Charles I, demanded over £2,000 from the mayor of Leicester to pay the king's forces who were camped around Queniborough. The mayor, however, pleaded poverty and sent only £500.

   • 2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist‎^[1], volume 407, number 8838, page 11:

     America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

2. A deficiency of something needed or desired

   poverty of soil

   poverty of the blood

   poverty of spirit

• See also Thesaurus:poverty

• See also Thesaurus:wealth

• impoverish
• poor
• poorness

• aporophobia

• “poverty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.