Impoverish \Im*pov"er*ish\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Impoverished;
p. pr. & vb. n. Impoverishing.] [OF. empovrir; pref. em-
(L. in) + povre poor, F. pauvre; cf. OF. apovrir, F.
appauvrir, where the prefix is a-, L. ad. Cf. Empoverish,
and see Poor, and -ish.]
1. To make poor; to reduce to poverty or indigence; as,
misfortune and disease impoverish families.
[1913 Webster]
2. To exhaust the strength, richness, or fertility of; to
make sterile; as, to impoverish land.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
impoverished
adj 1: poor enough to need help from others [syn: destitute, indigent,
necessitous, needy, poverty-stricken]
2: destroyed financially; "the broken fortunes of the family"
[syn: broken, wiped out(p)]
WordNet (r) 2.0
122 Moby Thesaurus words for "impoverished":
Lenten, Spartan, ablated, abstemious, ascetic, austere, badly off,
bankrupt, bare-handed, barren, beggared, beggarly, bereaved,
bereft, burnt up, consumed, denuded, depleted, deprived, desolate,
destitute, disadvantaged, dissipated, drained, dwarfed, dwarfish,
eaten up, effete, empty, empty-handed, eroded, exhausted, exiguous,
famished, finished, flat broke, fleeced, frugal, ghettoized, gone,
half-starved, ill off, ill-equipped, ill-furnished, ill-provided,
impecunious, in distress, in need, in rags, in want, indigent,
insolvent, jejune, lean, limited, meager, mean, mendicant, miserly,
narrow, necessitous, needy, niggardly, on relief, on short commons,
out at elbows, paltry, parsimonious, pauperized, penurious,
pinched, poor, poverty-stricken, puny, ruined, scant, scanty,
scrawny, scrimp, scrimpy, short, shorthanded, skimp, skimpy,
slender, slight, slim, small, spare, sparing, spent, starvation,
starved, starveling, starving, stingy, stinted, stone-broke,
straitened, strapped, stripped, stunted, subsistence, thin,
underfed, undermanned, undernourished, underprivileged, unfed,
unnourishing, unnutritious, unprovided, unreplenished, unsupplied,
up against it, used up, wasted, watered, watery, wiped out,
worn away, worn-out
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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