immiserate
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to make miserable.
-
to cause to become impoverished.
Other Word Forms
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:
Blake was lamenting the rise of the machine-filled factory, too, because he saw the way that it stood to blight communities and immiserate workers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2023
The factors that immiserate travelers benefit retail sectors that would otherwise struggle in airports the way they do in the real world.
From Slate ● Sep. 7, 2017
Most of the factors that immiserate their customers fall outside their influence.
From Slate ● Apr. 14, 2017
In their home ecosystems these species have, like all living things, a full complement of parasites, microbes, viruses, and insect predators to shorten and immiserate their lives.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Dahlia Lithwick: There were a lot of decisions in 2025 that immiserated huge amounts of people and made the world materially worse.
From Slate ● Jan. 3, 2026
Benjamim, a soon-to-be father, has come to São Paulo to learn more about his own father, Teodoro, who ended up homeless among “the immiserated, the favela dwellers, the landless people.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2021
In North Korea, the collapse of the regime would create a massive humanitarian crisis as a nation of traumatized and immiserated people suddenly became South Korea and China’s problem.
From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2017
That last adjective will seem unthinkable to some people—of course, years of austerity have immiserated millions—but if your point of comparison is Manchester circa 1982, 2016 doesn’t seem so bad.
From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2016
The Malthusian dynamic is that population increases to the point where it starts pressing on its resources, and large segments of the population become immiserated.
From Salon ● Nov. 23, 2015
Dogged by a lost war, an immiserating economy and water shortages, the Iranian government offers a measure of social freedom as a means of fending off a larger crisis.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
The ensuing crash is so searing, immiserating so many for so long that it can inspire sustained movements for change.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2025
In 2021 I set out to use in-depth qualitative research to figure out what makes gaslighting such an immiserating force.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 22, 2022
“But in the meantime, people are stuck in traffic, it’s a truly immiserating experience, and we need to alleviate that.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 10, 2022
Because the absence of capital is so immiserating, the return on investment in poor places is extremely high.
From Slate ● May 29, 2013
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.
