Topic Thesaurus
Roget's Thesaurus

Poverty

Nouns
  • poverty, indigence, penury, pauperism, destitution, want
  • need, neediness
  • lack, necessity, privation, distress, difficulties, wolf at the door. bad circumstances, poor circumstances, need circumstances, embarrassed circumstances, reduced circumstances, straightened circumstances
  • slender means, narrow means
  • straits
  • hand to mouth existence, low water, impecuniosity. beggary
  • mendicancy, mendicity
  • broken fortune, loss of fortune
  • insolvency etc. (nonpayment) Nonpayment. empty pocket, empty purse
  • light purse
  • beggarly account of empty boxes. [poor people] poor man, pauper, mendicant, mumper, beggar, starveling
  • fakir, schnorrer
  • homeless person.
Verbs
  • be poor etc. adj.
  • want, lack, starve, live from hand to mouth, have seen better days, go down in the world, come upon the parish
  • go to the dogs, go to wrack and ruin
  • not have a penny etc. (money) Money, not have a shot in one's locker
  • beg one's bread
  • run into debt etc. (debt) Debt. render poor etc. adj.
  • impoverish
  • reduce, reduce to poverty
  • pauperize, fleece, ruin, bring to the parish.
Adjectives
  • poor, indigent
  • poverty-stricken
  • badly off, poorly off, ill off
  • poor as a rat, poor as a church mouse, poor as a Job
  • fortuneless, dowerless, moneyless, penniless
  • unportioned, unmoneyed
  • impecunious
  • out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash
  • without a rap, not worth a rap etc. (money) Money
  • out of pocket, hard up
  • out at elbows, out at heels
  • seedy, bare-footed
  • beggarly, beggared
  • destitute
  • fleeced, stripped
  • bereft, bereaved
  • reduced
  • homeless. in want etc. n.
  • needy, necessitous, distressed, pinched, straitened
  • put to one's shifts, put to one's last shifts
  • unable to keep the wolf from the door, unable to make both ends meet
  • embarrassed, under hatches
  • involved etc. (in debt) Debt
  • insolvent etc. (not paying) Nonpayment.
Phrases
  • a penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree" [Lady Nairne]
  • he that is down can fall no lower" [Butler]
  • steeped . . . in poverty to the very steeped . . . in poverty to the very lips" [Othello]
  • the short and simple annals of the poor" [Gray].