impoverish
Americanverb (used with object)
-
impoverishes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
impoverished,
past participle, past
-
impoverishing
present participle
verb
-
to make poor or diminish the quality of
to impoverish society by cutting the grant to the arts
-
to deprive (soil, etc) of fertility
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
impoverishsimple
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impoverishessimple
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have impoverishedperfect
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has impoverishedperfect
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am impoverishingprogressive
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are impoverishingprogressive
-
is impoverishingprogressive
-
have been impoverishingperfect progressive
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has been impoverishingperfect progressive
Past
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impoverishedsimple
-
had impoverishedperfect
-
was impoverishingprogressive
-
were impoverishingprogressive
-
had been impoverishingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of impoverish
1400–50; late Middle English empoverishen < Middle French empovriss- (long stem of empovrir ), equivalent to em- em- 1 + povre poor + -iss -ish 2
Explanation
To impoverish is to take away a person's livelihood. When a drought ruins a farmer's crop and he has nothing to harvest, his bad luck may leave him and his family impoverished, or poor. The Latin prefix in- is changed to im when in front of a word starting with the letter p-, but its meaning "in" or "into" stays the same. With roots in the French word povre meaning "poor," impoverish means to make poor or drive someone "into poverty." The 2010 earthquake in Haiti left over a million people impoverished, destroying everything they owned.
Vocabulary lists containing impoverish
The Suffix -ish, Part 2
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4.3: Origins and Impact of the Western European Empires in the North Atlantic (Sources 1–9)
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1970 Nobel Peace Prize Speech: “One Word of Truth Outweighs the World” by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The concern among some groups is that the lower amount will impoverish people who are ill and have little prospect of getting a job anytime soon.
From BBC ● Mar. 30, 2026
The Luddite movement, which predated the Swing Riots, was led by textile workers convinced that power-operated looms would permanently impoverish the middle class.
From Barron's ● Feb. 25, 2026
Those who fear ideas, as well as those who view life as mostly transaction, impoverish themselves and our society.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 31, 2023
Niger relies heavily on foreign aid, and sanctions could further impoverish its more than 25 million people.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 1, 2023
We must forego no noble expression of idealistic faith, lest we impoverish our own souls, and beggar those who come after us.
From Atlantic Classics by Various
“The selfish-gene model increasingly impoverishes both scientific and popular views of genetics and evolution,” David Dobbs wrote in an essay for Aeon.
From Salon ● Apr. 23, 2026
But soil drainage gradually impoverishes the land, posing a threat to local farmers and releasing the CO2 captured by the peatland which are important carbon sinks.
From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2025
"This debate impoverishes democracy. It's a scrappy debate, in which you provoke, you use debauchery, you joke around," said Janones, who denied accusations that he uses fake news.
From Reuters ● Nov. 10, 2022
Because this culture of greed impoverishes all of us, it is, to call it by its true name, destruction.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 29, 2012
The first reflects its plenitude upon things,—it transfigures, it embellishes, it rationalises the world,—the latter impoverishes, bleaches, mars the value of things; it suppresses the world.
From The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. by Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
I lead a small faith-based nonprofit that works through churches in impoverished communities where many people live on less than $3 a day.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026
While Myanmar has been massively impoverished by the civil war, it has also emerged as a major global supplier of mined rare earth minerals -- vital for China's production of renewable energy technology.
From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 2026
In Barrow-in-Furness, an impoverished shipbuilding town in northwestern England, a multibillion-dollar contract to build nuclear submarines has highlighted inequality and pulled workers from other professions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026
Fujimori began her election day having breakfast in the Lima suburb of San Juan de Lurigancho, the most populous district in Peru, where impoverished neighbourhoods crowd the steep, dusty mountains.
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
Australia is by far the driest, smallest, flattest, most infertile, climatically most unpredictable, and biologically most impoverished continent.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Pete Rodriguez, the brotherhood’s western district vice president, called the proposal “outrageous” and suggested it could worsen the homelessness crisis by impoverishing workers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2024
The economic decisions that enriched some people while impoverishing others were made in distant cities and, for the most part, in foreign languages, and few people could discern their origins.
From Scientific American ● May 31, 2023
Independence came at a tremendous cost, however, since France forced the new republic to pay steep indemnities to compensate French citizens for their property losses for many years, impoverishing the new nation.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
“But in the longer term, only deeper reforms can prevent slower growth and increasing inequality, an impoverishing combination the region has not seen this century.”
From Reuters ● Sep. 28, 2021
The design is rather dwarfed by thus impoverishing the upper stories.
From England, Picturesque and Descriptive A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel by Cook, Joel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
