DESTITUTION

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does destitution mean? 

• DESTITUTION (noun)
  The noun DESTITUTION has 1 sense:

1. a state without friends or money or prospects

  Familiarity information: DESTITUTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESTITUTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state without friends or money or prospects

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

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

impoverishment; poorness; poverty (the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions)

 Context examples 

I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Then a family of six or seven boys sprung up like mushrooms, and flourished surprisingly, poor boys as well as rich, for Mr. Laurence was continually finding some touching case of destitution, and begging the Bhaers to take pity on the child, and he would gladly pay a trifle for its support.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)