dirt poor

adjective

1. lacking nearly all material means or resources for living.

dirt-poor

adjective

1. extremely poor

Word History and Origins

Origin of dirt poor¹

An Americanism dating back to 1935–40

Example Sentences

“We were dirt poor so I couldn’t afford to go to the movies too often, but I went whenever I could and focused in on movies as if they were more important than anything in life.”

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“We were dirt poor so I couldn’t afford to go to the movies often,” he told the AP in 1998.

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He had grown up dirt poor in what is now South Korea, then occupied by Japan.

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"Patients who were put in there were dirt poor," said Clare Blackmore, one of the volunteers.

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“We were dirt poor, surrounded by gang violence and fires — you could always smell the smoke,” Estrada says.

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Related Words

• bankrupt 
• exhausted 
• impoverished 
• indigent 
• insolvent 
• needy 
• penniless 
• poor 
• poverty-stricken 
• strapped