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poverty

UK/ˈpɒvəti/US/ˈpɑːvɚti/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,969 of 15,258leans written

Poverty is the state of being very poor. Live in poverty, child poverty, the poverty line.

It is measured two ways that give different answers: absolute poverty is falling below a fixed income, and relative poverty is falling far below the middle of your own society. Both matter, and arguments about policy often turn on which one is being counted.

Definitions of poverty

  1. 1nounpovertyThe state of being very poor.B1+

    “She grew up in poverty, sharing one room with her parents and three brothers.”

poverty is a condition.

Where it comes from

Old French poverte comes from Latin paupertas, from pauper, poor. Pauper and poor are the same root.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *peh₂w-

  2. Latin

    paupertās

  3. Old French

    poverté

  4. Middle English

    poverte

  5. English, today

    poverty

Built from

  • pauper · Latin — poor
  • -tas · Latin — noun of state suffix

From Middle English poverte, from Old French poverté (Modern French pauvreté), from Latin paupertās, from pauper (“poor”) + -tas (“noun of state suffix”). Cognates include pauper, poor.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

poverty in the wild

  • Extreme poverty mainly refers to an income below the international poverty line of $3 per day in 2025, set by the World Bank.

    Extreme poverty

  • As of 2026, it is estimated that the country with the most people living in extreme poverty is the DRC, at 76.2 million.

    Extreme poverty

  • In 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics of Honduras, 73% of the country's population lived in poverty, and 53% lived in extreme poverty.

    Honduras

  • The definition of relative poverty varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.

    Poverty

  • The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for the average adult.

    Poverty threshold

1 / 5

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.

Related words

the pauper family

poverty

poverty — used about once every 764 pages · #3,969 · point at the bar for the others

  • poverty line