What does impoverished mean?we found 4 entries for the meaning of impoverished
 

Impoverish \Im*pov"er*ish\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Impoverished; p. pr. & vb. n. Impoverishing.]

[OF. empovrir; pref. em- (L. in) + povre poor, F. pauvre; cf. OF. apovrir, F. appauvrir, where the prefix is a-, L. ad. Cf. Empoverish, and see Poor, and -ish.]

1. To make poor; to reduce to poverty or indigence; as, misfortune and disease impoverish families. [1913 Webster]

2. To exhaust the strength, richness, or fertility of; to make sterile; as, to impoverish land. [1913 Webster]

Source: The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
 

 

122 Moby Thesaurus words for "impoverished": Lenten, Spartan, ablated, abstemious, ascetic, austere, badly off, bankrupt, bare-handed, barren, beggared, beggarly, bereaved, bereft, burnt up, consumed, denuded, depleted, deprived, desolate, destitute, disadvantaged, dissipated, drained, dwarfed, dwarfish, eaten up, effete, empty, empty-handed, eroded, exhausted, exiguous, famished, finished, flat broke, fleeced, frugal, ghettoized, gone, half-starved, ill off, ill-equipped, ill-furnished, ill-provided, impecunious, in distress, in need, in rags, in want, indigent, insolvent, jejune, lean, limited, meager, mean, mendicant, miserly, narrow, necessitous, needy, niggardly, on relief, on short commons, out at elbows, paltry, parsimonious, pauperized, penurious, pinched, poor, poverty-stricken, puny, ruined, scant, scanty, scrawny, scrimp, scrimpy, short, shorthanded, skimp, skimpy, slender, slight, slim, small, spare, sparing, spent, starvation, starved, starveling, starving, stingy, stinted, stone-broke, straitened, strapped, stripped, stunted, subsistence, thin, underfed, undermanned, undernourished, underprivileged, unfed, unnourishing, unnutritious, unprovided, unreplenished, unsupplied, up against it, used up, wasted, watered, watery, wiped out, worn away, worn-out

Source: Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
 

 

impoverished adj
1: poor enough to need help from others [syn: destitute, indigent, necessitous, needy, poverty-stricken]
2: destroyed financially; "the broken fortunes of the family" [syn: broken, wiped out(p)]

Source: WordNet (r) 2.0
 

 

Impoverish \Im*pov"er*ish\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Impoverished; p. pr. & vb. n. Impoverishing.]

[OF. empovrir; pref. em- (L. in) + povre poor, F. pauvre; cf. OF. apovrir, F. appauvrir, where the prefix is a-, L. ad. Cf. Empoverish, and see Poor, and -ish.]

1. To make poor; to reduce to poverty or indigence; as, misfortune and disease impoverish families.

2. To exhaust the strength, richness, or fertility of; to make sterile; as, to impoverish land.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
 

Search for impoverished @ Ask Jeeves | Google | MSN | Yahoo

Define impoverished and 150,000 other words at dictionary.net




About Us | Contact Us | Link to Us | Terms of Use
© Dictionary.net  All Rights Reserved