poverty
[noun]
Synonyms:
- pennilessness, beggary, destitution, hardship, indigence, insolvency, need, penury, privation, want
- scarcity, dearth, deficiency, insufficiency, lack, paucity, shortage

---

Antonyms: riches
Contrasted words: affluence, comfort, luxury, opulence, prosperity, richness, wealth
Related Idioms: hand-to-mouth existence, straitened circumstances
Related Words: exigency, necessity, juncture, pass, pinch, strait, difficulty, distress, embarrassment, hardship, suffering, mendicancy

[TahlilGaran] English Synonym Dictionary ▲

pov‧er‧ty W3 /ˈpɒvəti $ ˈpɑːvərti/ noun
[Date: 1100-1200; Language: Old French; Origin: poverté, from Latin paupertas, from pauper; ⇒ poor]

1. [uncountable] the situation or experience of being poor ⇒ poor, impoverished:
Millions of elderly people live in poverty.
We need an effective strategy to fight poverty.
continued efforts to alleviate poverty and raise living standards
scenes of abject poverty
the causes of urban poverty

2. the poverty line (also the poverty level American English) the income below which a person or a family is officially considered to be very poor and in need of help:
20% of the population now live below the poverty line.

3. the poverty trap a situation in which a poor person without a job cannot afford to take a low paying job because they would lose the money they receive from the government

4. [singular, uncountable] formal a lack of a particular quality
poverty of
The novel shows a surprising poverty of imagination.

[TahlilGaran] Dictionary of Contemporary English ▲

poverty
noun
ADJ. abject, absolute, extreme, grinding, severe | widespread | rural, urban
VERB + POVERTY alleviate, combat, reduce | eliminate, eradicate hoping to eradicate urban poverty
POVERTY + NOUN trap Caught in the poverty trap, they are unable to save money for business ventures.
PREP. in ~ Most of the population lives in grinding poverty.
~ among the true extent of poverty among the unemployed
~ of His work displays a poverty of imagination.
PHRASES below/on the poverty line families living on incomes below the poverty line

[TahlilGaran] Collocations Dictionary ▲

poverty

live in poverty
Half the world is living in poverty.
grow up in poverty
No child should grow up in poverty in America in the 21st century.
die in poverty
His art was not appreciated and he died in poverty.
be reduced to poverty (=become very poor)
By the end of the war, millions of people had been reduced to poverty.
fight/combat poverty (=take action to get rid of poverty)
The money should be spent on fighting poverty.
tackle poverty (=take action to reduce the amount of poverty)
Our priority is to tackle poverty and global inequality.
reduce poverty (=reduce the amount of poverty)
More must be done to reduce child poverty.
alleviate/relieve poverty formal (=make it less severe)
What has the West done to alleviate poverty in the world?
extreme/severe poverty
They live in conditions of extreme poverty.
abject/grinding/dire poverty (=extremely severe)
He was shocked by the abject poverty that he saw.
relative poverty (=when someone is poor compared with someone else)
the relative poverty of the southern states
world poverty
They campaigned for an end to world poverty.
urban/rural poverty
People come to the capital seeking to escape rural poverty.
child poverty
There is increasing child poverty in our country.

[TahlilGaran] Collocations Dictionary ▲