impoverished

UK/ɪmˈpɒv(ə)ɹɪʃt/US/ɪmˈpɑvəɹɪʃt/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,173 of 15,258leans written

Impoverished means made very poor, or drained of richness. An impoverished family, impoverished soil, an impoverished vocabulary.

The participle matters: impoverished says somebody was made poor by something, where poor merely describes the state — which is why it appears in writing about policy and history. Of soil it means stripped of nutrients. Note poverty; and that the Latin pauper means poor.

Definitions of impoverished

1adjectiveimpoverishedMade very poor, or drained of richness.C1
“The charity builds schools in impoverished villages with no running water.”

impoverished is a state of poverty.

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

impoverished in the wild

In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs.
Skid row
In the developing world impoverished people who might not be averse to eating meat are unable to because meat can be a luxury.
Economic vegetarianism
The resulting leadership styles are as follows: The indifferent (previously called impoverished) style (1,1): evade and elude.
Managerial grid model
Public welfare in Puerto Rico is a system of nutrition assistance, public health, education, and subsidized public housing, among others, provided to the impoverished population of the island.
Welfare in Puerto Rico
An impoverished village in a largely rural area, though it has a venerable history and is a well-known site of pilgrimage.
Andocs

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary