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squalor

UK/ˈskwɒlə(ɹ)/US/ˈskwɑlɚ/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,058 of 15,258neutral

Squalor is filthy and wretched living conditions. Live in squalor.

It describes conditions rather than poverty, since the two are not the same thing. Squalor is usually a symptom of something else rather than a choice anybody made.

Michael Righi from Pittsburgh, USA · CC BY 2.0

Definitions of squalor

  1. 1nounsqualorFilthy and wretched living conditions.C1

    “The squalor in that block was reported for nine years running.”

squalor is a condition.

Where it comes from

Latin squalor means filth, from squalere, to be dirty or rough.

  1. Latin

    squālor

  2. English, today

    squalor

From the Latin squālor.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

squalor in the wild

  • Allan Lloyd-Smith writes that among "the sources of abhuman Gothic horror for many writers at this time were the urban squalor and misery of overcrowded cities".

    Abhuman

  • Other possible terms are senile breakdown, Plyushkin's syndrome (after the Gogol character), social breakdown, and senile squalor syndrome.

    Diogenes syndrome

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.