'Poverty' definitions:
Definition of 'poverty'
From: WordNet
noun
The state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions [syn: poverty, poorness, impoverishment] [ant: wealth, wealthiness]
Definition of 'Poverty'
From: GCIDE
- Poverty \Pov"er*ty\ (p[o^]v"[~e]r*t[y^]), n. [OE. poverte, OF. povert['e], F. pauvret['e], fr. L. paupertas, fr. pauper poor. See Poor.]
- 1. The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need. "Swathed in numblest poverty." --Keble. [1913 Webster]
- The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. --Prov. xxiii. 21. [1913 Webster]
- 2. Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil; poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas. [1913 Webster]
- Poverty grass (Bot.), a name given to several slender grasses (as Aristida dichotoma, and Danthonia spicata) which often spring up on old and worn-out fields. [1913 Webster]
- Syn: Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want; scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness.
- Usage: Poverty, Indigence, Pauperism. Poverty is a relative term; what is poverty to a monarch, would be competence for a day laborer. Indigence implies extreme distress, and almost absolute destitution. Pauperism denotes entire dependence upon public charity, and, therefore, often a hopeless and degraded state. [1913 Webster] Powan
Synonyms of 'poverty'
From: Moby Thesaurus
- beggary,
- dearth,
- destitution,
- difficulty,
- distress,
- embarrassment,
- exigency,
- hand-to-mouth existence,
- hardship,
- impecuniousness,
- impoverishment,
- inadequacy,
- indigence,
- insolvency,
- insufficiency,
- juncture,
- lack,
- mendicancy,
- necessity,
- need,
- neediness,
- pass,
- paucity,
- pauperism,
- pennilessness,
- penury,
- pinch,
- poorness,
- privation,
- rareness,
- rarity,
- scant,
- scant sufficiency,
- scantiness,
- scarceness,
- scarcity,
- shortage,
- sparseness,
- sparsity,
- strait,
- suffering,
- uncommonness,
- unprosperousness,
- want