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
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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
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is impoverishingprogressive
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have been impoverishingperfect progressive
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has been impoverishingperfect progressive
Past
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impoverishedsimple
-
had impoverishedperfect
-
was impoverishingprogressive
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were impoverishingprogressive
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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 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
Composer Max Richter, another of the artists involved in the album, noted how the plans not only have an impact on musicians but "impoverish creators" across the board, from writers to visual artists and beyond.
From BBC ● Feb. 24, 2025
Niger relies heavily on foreign aid, and sanctions could further impoverish its more than 25 million people.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 1, 2023
The judge said those convicted had by their actions helped impoverish Mozambique's people.
From Reuters ● Dec. 7, 2022
My wife’s money has all gone to him, and I will not impoverish myself further.
From Eli's Children The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family by George Manville Fenn
“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
Translating my private, zany experience of a photo of a thrift-shop window into words necessarily impoverishes it, but it captures something of the camp interjection in action.
From Slate ● May 14, 2019
It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 by Various
Pruett, who gave birth to Landers’ father, Corky, at 15, had a tough and impoverished youth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
He was the genuine artifact, the son of an impoverished Minnesota miner; a lumberjack and a steelworker in his youth.
From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026
The outages which have sometimes lasted 12 to 48 hours have plunged those living in the deeply impoverished country into steaming darkness at night.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
He estimates that arms sales to Russia and the troop deployment have netted the impoverished country close to $10bn.
From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026
Chicago’s small but vocal censorians feared that impoverished parents would turn the building into a depository for unwanted children.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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
Compensation processes “exacerbated, rather than mitigated” negative impacts, impoverishing villagers who lost access to farmland and faced long delays awaiting compensation.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 4, 2022
In England the war with France, and the War of the Roses, by impoverishing the nobles had broken their remaining authority, and that system which had been gradually perishing since the Conquest was virtually dead.
From A Short History of Germany by Mary Platt Parmele
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.
