INDIGENCE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does indigence mean? 

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

1. a state of extreme poverty or destitution

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• INDIGENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of extreme poverty or destitution

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

indigence; need; pauperism; pauperization; penury

Context example:

a general state of need exists among the homeless

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

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

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "indigence"):

beggary; mendicancy; mendicity (the state of being a beggar or mendicant)

Derivation:

indigent (poor enough to need help from others)

 Context examples 

It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

In spite of the improvements and additions which were making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner having once been within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had tried to infer from it;—no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared—but there, the deficiency was considerable.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)