BEGGARY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does beggary mean? 

• BEGGARY (noun)
  The noun BEGGARY has 2 senses:

1. a solicitation for money or food (especially in the street by an apparently penniless person)

2. the state of being a beggar or mendicant

  Familiarity information: BEGGARY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BEGGARY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A solicitation for money or food (especially in the street by an apparently penniless person)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

beggary; begging; mendicancy

Hypernyms ("beggary" is a kind of...):

solicitation (an entreaty addressed to someone of superior status)

Derivation:

beg (call upon in supplication; entreat)

beg (make a solicitation or entreaty for something; request urgently or persistently)

beg (ask to obtain free)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The state of being a beggar or mendicant

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

beggary; mendicancy; mendicity

Context example:

they were reduced to mendicancy

Hypernyms ("beggary" is a kind of...):

indigence; need; pauperism; pauperization; penury (a state of extreme poverty or destitution)

 Context examples 

“Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the end!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I answered, “that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others.”

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat’s sinking.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)