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penury
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  • remember our feelings of disgrace and penury and shame  (source)
  • ...who had not learned that first principle of penury which is to scrimp and save for the sake of scrimping and saving,  (source)
  • ...middle-aged woman worn with the cares of penury and a large family...  (source)
    penury = poverty
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
  • Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make of these things,  (source)
    penury = a state of extreme poverty
  • It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.  (source)
    penurious = stingy (as though impoverished)
  • He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.  (source)
    penuriousness = state of extreme poverty
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
  • There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment.  (source)
    penury = poverty (being out of money)
  • There are several branches of House Arryn scattered across the Vale, all as proud as they are penurious, save for the Gulltown Arryns, who had the rare good sense to marry merchants.†  (source)
  • Naturally: for when "poor Peter" had occupied his arm-chair in the wainscoted parlor, no assiduous beetles for whom the cook prepares boiling water could have been less welcome on a hearth which they had reasons for preferring, than those persons whose Featherstone blood was ill-nourished, not from penuriousness on their part, but from poverty.†  (source)
    penuriousness = state of extreme poverty
  • At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, made him shudder.  (source)
    penury = poverty
  • Well, the Widow Stone, a steely-eyed harridan of penurious Scottish stock, handed over to me her husband's correspondence of a lifetime.†  (source)
  • When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling and collection.  (source)
    penury = extreme poverty
  • Penurious?†  (source)
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