pauperize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of pauperize
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.
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Runaway price boosts might wipe out savings, pauperize individuals, bring down governments —but usually in only one or a few countries at any specific time, and for what seemed fairly clear reasons.
From Time Magazine Archive
Arose Alexander R. Sheppard, great public spirit, great builder, to pave and light streets, lay sewers, plant trees, pauperize himself.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thus it cannot be said of these homes as is said of many institutions, that they pauperize men in place of helping them.
From The Social Work of the Salvation Army by Edwin Gifford Lamb
It has opposed to every proposal of social reform an obstacle that seemed insuperable,—the danger of a rapid overincrease of population that would pauperize the community.
From The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice by Stephen Leacock
Would it have corrupted him, since pauperize him further it could not?
From Seven English Cities by William Dean Howells
"Citizens are being pauperized left, right and centre, why does the citizenry of this country deserve so uncaring & heartless a leadership?"
From BBC ● May 27, 2025
Iran, after all, is not the only Muslim country with an urban westernized elite that’s been decimated by dictatorship and pauperized by decades of war.
From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2021
“Haiti was immediately quarantined and pauperized into the forced dysfunction of a postcolonial state,” literary scholar Nick Nesbitt has written, “hamstrung by the terrified slave-holding powers that then controlled the globe.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 4, 2021
“Massive economic mismanagement coupled with spiraling corruption have pauperized large segments of the Arab people,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 26, 2019
The army, no longer uplifted by ardors of conflict with a foreign foe, became conscious of its hunger, its nakedness, and the prospect of returning in rags to pauperized homes.
From The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. I. (of II) With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England; to which is added a Sketch of Paine by William Cobbett by Moncure Daniel Conway
Banks stopped giving out money, instantly pauperizing hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, who couldn’t access their accounts even as they watched the value of their savings wither away.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2021
But by humiliating and pauperizing Germany, the victors contributed to the conditions out of which Nazism arose.
From Time Magazine Archive
Three years ago it would have been hard to find one of them who would not have been ready to denounce the pauperizing effect of the dole.*
From Time Magazine Archive
He recoups by stealing the family jewels of the cousin's fiance, pauperizing him in a single stroke and canceling the marriage vows.
From Time Magazine Archive
It is desirable to get the children into the schools, but it is highly undesirable to do this by practically pauperizing the parents.
From Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day by Alfred Farthing Robbins
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.
