impoverish
Americanverb (used with object)
-
impoverishes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
impoverished,
past participle, past
-
impoverishing
present participle
verb
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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
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had impoverishedperfect
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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
"Those who seek to impoverish our country in this manner have declared war against the Nigerian people," he told legislators when reconvening the House of Representatives after a two-month break.
From Reuters ● Sep. 20, 2022
He returned to the Vicarage with his mind dwelling upon the eternal conflict, a conflict accentuated by the world-war, because its issues seemed to enrich or impoverish everybody.
From The Soul of Susan Yellam by Horace Annesley Vachell
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
But the semantic shift impoverishes our ethical vocabulary.
From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2014
The excess of air impoverishes the gas, and the fresh fuel lowers the temperature of the mass undergoing combustion, so that again the gas in process of formation is weakened.
Outside music, her philanthropy gave scholarships to impoverished students and supplied more than 200 million books to young readers.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
The impoverished Choco region on the Pacific coast also suffered immensely, with some of its remote communities unreachable by authorities to assess the damage.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
The Al-Khair Foundation provides emergency relief and developmental support in "some of the world's most impoverished areas", according to its website.
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 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
“A bundle to survive on, from an impoverished merchant, for nothing in return? The boy is dead to you. That is nothing. I give you six rare treasures!”
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
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
The tendency of growing shallow-rooted crops will therefore be towards impoverishing the surface-soil; whereas the occasional growth of a deep-rooted crop brings the plant-food in the subsoil into requisition.
From Manures and the principles of manuring by Charles Morton Aikman
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.
