poverty
Americannoun
-
the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor.
-
deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc..
poverty of the soil.
- Synonyms:
- insufficiency
-
scantiness; insufficiency.
Their efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of medical supplies.
- Synonyms:
- dearth, paucity, shortage, inadequacy
- Antonyms:
- sufficiency, surfeit, abundance, glut, excess
noun
-
the condition of being without adequate food, money, etc
-
scarcity or dearth
a poverty of wit
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a lack of elements conducive to fertility in land or soil
Usage
What are other ways to say poverty? Poverty refers to the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support. How does this noun compare to synonyms destitution and indigence? Learn more on Thesaurus.com.
Etymology
Origin of poverty
First recorded in 1125–75; Middle English poverte, from Old French, from Latin paupertāt- (stem of paupertās ) “small means, moderate circumstances.”; pauper, -ty 2
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.
In a country that continues to grapple with high levels of poverty despite plentiful natural resources – including the world's largest reserves of bauxite, which is used to make aluminium - this idea strikes a chord.
From BBC
No wonder mud became “shorthand for the miseries of poverty,” Ms. Ziegelman writes.
In the words of one admiring Senate colleague, he “bonded” with the party’s former leader, Robert Byrd, because both men “had known not only poverty, but desperate poverty.”
In a bid to escape poverty, Soumah said she had travelled across Africa to get to Belarus, hoping to get to the EU.
From Barron's
It is also one of its poorest regions, with a poverty rate of more than 65 percent, according to statistics from 2021-2022.
From Barron's
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.
