POVERTY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does poverty mean? 

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

1. the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• POVERTY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

impoverishment; poorness; poverty

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

financial condition (the condition of (corporate or personal) finances)

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

deprivation; neediness; privation; want (a state of extreme poverty)

destitution (a state without friends or money or prospects)

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

impecuniousness; pennilessness; penuriousness (a state of lacking money)

Antonym:

wealth (the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money)

 Context examples 

As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of existence.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I couldn't bear a rich husband, said Jo decidedly, adding in a softer tone, Don't fear poverty.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Poverty is exactly what I have determined against.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But poverty was heavy upon him, his land was scant, his coffers empty, and the very castle which covered him the holding of another.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

U.S. Census data can be used to determine the concentration of poverty at the neighborhood level.

(Concentrated Disadvantage, NCI Thesaurus)

Filling this “cooling gap” links with the SDGs on affordable and clean energy, poverty reduction, health and wellbeing, and sustainable cities and communities.

(Billions at risk from heat stress at home, SciDev.Net)

I said, they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes.

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