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 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
Botswana's president Mokgweetsi Masisi told German media this would only impoverish Botswanans.
From BBC ● Apr. 2, 2024
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
Piety, in its turn, conscious of its proper nature, will not encroach on science; its affirmations can neither enrich, impoverish, nor embarrass science, for they bear on different points and answer different ends.
From Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion based on Psychology and History by Auguste Sabatier
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
Richness impoverishes you; it takes away from us the best we have.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 20, 2015
But the semantic shift impoverishes our ethical vocabulary.
From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2014
Both rest on the principle called Balance of Trade; the formula of which is: "A people impoverishes itself when it imports, and enriches itself when it exports."
From What Is Free Trade? An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader by Frédéric Bastiat
North Korea is an impoverished country with very little industry and heavy international sanctions and experts say the regime uses cyber crime as a way to bring money in.
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026
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
One of Socios en Salud’s first projects was to build a pharmacy next to Father Jack’s church, to dispense free medicine to the most impoverished people in the slum.
From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French
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
Night soil has been used as a manure, for ages, in China, which is, undoubtedly, one great secret of their success in supporting a dense population, for so long a time, without impoverishing the soil.
From The Elements of Agriculture A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools by George E. (George Edwin) Waring
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