See Also: Poverty(medicine)
Poverty(money)
poverty(dictionary)
poverty areas(medicine)
Poverty gap ratio(finance)
poverty-stricken(dictionary)
Poverty Poker Dictionary - Poker(gambling)

poverty (iou)



poverty noun. ME.
[Old French poverte, poverte from Latin paupertas, -tatis from pauper poor: see -TY1.]
I.
The condition of having little or no wealth; indigence, destitution, want; relative lack of money or material possessions. Also spec. (Ecclesiastical), renunciation of the right to individual ownership of property. ME.
primary poverty, secondary poverty.
S. Bellow Father blamed himself bitterly for the poverty that forced him to bring us up in a slum. A. Storr Freud was..neat in dress..even when early poverty made this difficult.
b. In pl. Material deprivations, hardships. Now rare or obsolete. M16.
M. Twain The household poverties..had been made to blossom like the rose.
transf. The poor collectively. LME-L16.
II.
Deficiency in or lack of an appropriate or a particular property, quality, or ingredient; inferiority, paltriness, meanness; unproductiveness. ME.
Shakespeare Sonnets Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth. I. Watts The poverty of your understanding. S. Haughton The extraordinary poverty of..north-eastern Africa in river-producing power.
b. Poor physical condition, feebleness. E16.
Scantiness, dearth, scarcity; smallness of amount. LME.
Comb.: poverty-grass (a) any of several N. American grasses that grow on poor soil, esp. Aristida dichotoma; (b) = poverty-plant below; poverty level, poverty line the estimated minimum income sufficient for maintaining the necessities of life; poverty-plant a small shrubby N. American heathlike plant, Hudsonia ericoides, of the rockrose family; poverty programme US a programme or policy designed to alleviate poverty; poverty-stricken adjective reduced to or suffering from poverty, extremely poor; poverty-struck adjective (now rare or obsolete) poverty-stricken; poverty trap a situation in which an increase of income is offset by a consequent loss of State benefits, making real improvement impossible.