pauper
/ˈpɔːpə
/- Disease spread rapidly among the half starved and half clothed paupers.
- And the heat went out of the pursuit eventually, and when he died in 1762, although a pauper, he was no longer a fugitive.
- This means people will not belong to any of the classes or professions, but will simply be poor and helpless paupers.
Synonyms
- Dickens's rage against the New Poor Law, which precluded able-bodied paupers from relief, is underplayed.
- By Winter he is penniless, far from home, and buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
- I suspect he's buried in a pauper's grave somewhere there in that little town's cemetery, long since forgotten.
Derivatives
pauperdom
- We and the Russians and the French, and the UN, and the Turks and the other Arabs, permitted millions of people to die or be reduced to misery and pauperdom.
- It's where every day, your duties can mean the difference between life and death, prosperity and pauperdom, happiness or sadness for thousands and thousands of people.
- In the volatile economic climate of Georgian Britain, even this slender lifeline might preserve a broken old redcoat from pauperdom or worse.
pauperism
/ noun ...- As land increases in value, poverty deepens and pauperism appears.
- A creeping process of impoverishment ensued, accelerating progressively to become the generally recognized pauperism of the nineteenth century.
- Meanwhile, the country continued to descend deeper into fragmentation, general pauperism, and mutual predacity.
pauperization
/ noun ...- They form a community not only by a common religion, but also by common deprivation, vilification, and pauperisation.
- It symbolized repression, plunder, and pauperization of the people of this country.
- The pauperization of Micronesia was a direct result of foreign aid.
pauperize
/ (also pauperise) verb ...- They will have died, lonely, homeless, frightened and pauperised, deserted by us.
- How many million pounds sterling were siphoned off from India, pauperizing the country?
- Monetary compensation is a sure way of pauperising the already marginalised, who have traditionally lived off the land.
Origin
Late 15th century: from Latin, literally 'poor'. The word's use in English originated in the Latin legal phrase in forma pauperis, literally 'in the form of a poor person' (allowing non-payment of costs).
poor from Middle English:
The Latin word for ‘poor’ pauper, is the base of pauper (early 16th century), poverty (Middle English), and poor. The phrase poor as a church mouse, or ‘extremely poor’, comes from the notion that a church mouse must be particularly deprived as it does not have the opportunity to find pickings from a kitchen or larder, and there are few crumbs to be found in a well-swept church. You sometimes hear a wealthy young person whose money appears to bring them no happiness described as poor little rich girl (or boy). Though he did not coin the phrase, Noël Coward certainly popularized it with his 1925 song ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’.
Rhymes
- direct-grant school
- direct injection
- direction
- directional
- directionality
- directionally
- direction finder
- directionless
- directive
- direct labour
- directly
- direct mail
- direct mailing
- direct marketing
- direct method
- directness
- direct object
- Directoire
- Directoire drawers
- Directoire knickers
- director
- directorate
- director general
- directorial
- Director of Public Prosecutions