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
-
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
Meantime, many smaller cities, more eligibly located for the purpose, are already enriching by their Sewage the rural districts adjacent, which they had previously tended strongly to impoverish.
From What I know of farming: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon science by Horace Greeley
“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 revenue that comes from prosperity enriches a nation; the revenue that comes from its degradation impoverishes.
From Victory out of Ruin by Norman Maclean
Pereira's worst affected neighborhoods were also its most impoverished, with homeless people, Venezuelan migrants and street vendors in precarious situations bearing the brunt of the impact.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
BANGKOK—The internal watchdog of the World Bank’s private-investment arm found that Cambodian microfinance lenders harmed impoverished borrowers by pressuring them to keep paying back loans they couldn’t afford.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
UN chief Antonio Guterres will visit gang-ravaged Haiti on Tuesday to show solidarity with victims of violence in the impoverished Caribbean nation long plagued by political, economic and security woes.
From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 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
That "something” is that, according to Daniel H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine, "the incredibly rich ocean off this incredibly impoverished coast was the critical factor.”
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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
It’s not about impoverishing anyone but more about creating a truly healthy region for everyone to live in.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 20, 2023
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
Their attitude toward life, like his, had been wrong from the beginning; they, like him, were striking examples of the dire effects of a false viewpoint in the impoverishing of human life.
From Carmen Ariza by Charles Francis Stocking
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.
