poverty

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Lack of money

Nouns

1. poverty, impecuniousness, indigence, penury, pauperism, destitution, want, poverty line or level; need, neediness; lack, necessity, privation, distress, difficulties; bad, poor, or needy circumstances; reduced or straitened circumstances, extremity; slender means, straits, bottom dollar; hand-to-mouth existence; beggary; mendicancy, loss of fortune, bankruptcy, insolvency (see debt).Slang, dog's life, the bear, tap city. See adversity, insufficiency, nonpayment.

2. poor man, pauper, mendicant, beggar, starveling, homeless person, welfare mother; underclass, dangerous class, honest poor. Informal, street person. Slang, cracker, jim crow, latch, reliefer, bag lady or man, grate people, skell, mole people, zero-parent children, squeegee kid, driftwood, musher, bindle stiff, bum, hobo, tramp, vagrant, moocher, panhandler, ding, doxy, po' buckra, poorlander.

3. almshouse, poorhouse, workhouse, settlement house, flop[house]; public housing, slum clearance, favela, projects (see abode); welfare, work-fare.

Verbs

1. want, lack, starve, live from hand to mouth, have seen better days, go down in the world, go to the dogs, go to wrack and ruin; not have a penny to one's name, be up against it; beg [one's bread]; tighten one's belt, keep body and soul together, keep the wolf from the door, scrape the barrel. Slang, go broke, lose one's shirt.

2. impoverish, reduce to poverty; pauperize, fleece, ruin, strip.

Adjectives — poor, indigent; poverty-stricken; economically disadvantaged, underprivileged; poor as a church mouse; poor as Job's turkey; penniless, impecunious; hard up; out at elbows or heels; seedy, shabby; beggarly, beggared, down and out; destitute, bereft, in want, needy, necessitous, distressed, pinched, straitened, strapped, wasted; unable to keep the wolf from the door, unable to make both ends meet; embarrassed, involved; insolvent, bankrupt, on one's uppers, on the rocks, on the beach. Informal, in the hole. Slang, broke, stony, stone-broke, flat [broke], down to the wire, looking for a handout, melted-out, on one's ear.

Phrases — poverty is not a crime; beggars can't be choosers; money isn't everything; you cannot get blood from a stone.

Quotations — The poor always ye have with you (Bible), The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty (G. B. Shaw), Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor (Alec Baldwin), He is poor, and that's revenge enough (Shakespeare), Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it (Benjamin Franklin), Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime (Aristotle), There is something about poverty that smells like death (Zora Neale Hurston), If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich ( J. F. Kennedy), A hungry man is not a free man (Adlai Stevenson).

Antonyms, see money, prosperity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [Want of earthly goods]

Syn. destitution, want, indigence, penury, need, beggary, pennilessness, neediness, mendicancy, pauperism, insufficiency, starvation, famine, hunger, underdevelopment, dearth, privation, reduced circumstances, insolvency, impoverishment, impecuniousness, broken fortune, straits, financial distress, hardship, deficiency, meagerness, aridity, exiguity, stint, depletion, deficit, debt, poorness, hand-to-mouth existence, wolf at the door*, deep water*, hard spot*, pinch*, bite*, crunch*, tough going*; see also lack 1 .

Ant. wealth*, prosperity, comfort.

2. [Want of any deSirable thing]

Syn. shortage, shortness, insufficiency, inadequacy, exigency, scarcity, incompleteness, failing, defect; see also lack 2 .

Syn.- poverty , the broadest of these terms, implies a lack of the resources for reasonably comfortable living; destitution and want imply such Great poverty that the means for mere subsistence, such as food and shelter, are lacking; indigence , a somewhat euphemistic term, implies a lack of comforts that one formerly enjoyed; penury suggests such severe poverty as to cause misery or a loss of self-respect

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

poorness, want, need, destitution, indigence, pennilessness, privation, penury, financial distress, *wolf at the door, *Dickensian poverty, *hand-to-mouth existence, homelessness, lack, scarcity, paucity, insufficiency. ''The parent of revolution and crime.''—Aristotle. ''The reward of honest fools.''—Colley Cibber. ''Life near the bone, where it is sweetest.''—Henry Thoreau.

ANT.: wealth, riches, affluence, plenty, abundance

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. The condition of being extremely poor: beggary, destitution, impecuniosity, lmpecuniousness, impoverishment, indigence, need, neediness, pennilessness, penuriousness,, penury, privation, want. See RICH. 2. The condition or fact of being deficient: defect, deficiency, deficit, inadequacy, insufficiency, lack, paucity, scantiness, scantness, scarceness, scarcity, shortage, shortcoming, shortfall, underage1. See EXCESS.