Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Poverty

Pov′er·ty (pŏv′ẽr·ty̆), n. [OE. poverte, OF. poverté, F. pauvreté, fr. L. paupertas, fr. pauper poor. See Poor.] 1. The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need. "Swathed in numblest poverty." Keble.

The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. Prov. xxiii. 21.

2. Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil; poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas.

Poverty grass (Bot.), a name given to several slender grasses (as Aristida dichotoma, and Danthonia spicata) which often spring up on old and worn-out fields.

Syn. — Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want; scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness. Poverty, Indigence, Pauperism. Poverty is a relative term; what is poverty to a monarch, would be competence for a day laborer. Indigence implies extreme distress, and almost absolute destitution. Pauperism denotes entire dependence upon public charity, and, therefore, often a hopeless and degraded state.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.