Impoverished

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  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)}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  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