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Definition
a state of extreme poverty or destitution- The couple suffered from substance abuse, gambling, lack of family support, and other social ills that lead to penury.
penury = extreme poverty
- She has been reduced to penury.
- ...middle-aged woman worn with the cares of penury and a large family...Thornton Wilder -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury.Mary Shelley -- Frankenstein
- Along with the pressures of living together came penury.Arundhati Roy -- The God of Small Things
- ...virtue of itself sheds a certain light, even though it be through the straits and chinks of penury,Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote
- The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.William Shakespeare -- Measure for Measure - remember our feelings of disgrace and penury and shameChang-rae Lee -- Native Speaker
- ...who had not learned that first principle of penury which is to scrimp and save for the sake of scrimping and saving,William Faulkner -- Absalom, Absalom!
- 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,Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle
- He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge
- What prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury?William Shakespeare -- As You Like It
- And now to chuse the mortification of Mrs. Elton's notice and the penury of her conversation, rather than return to the superior companions who have always loved her with such real, generous affection.Jane Austen -- Emma
- 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.H.G. Wells -- The Invisible Man
- 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.Mark Twain -- The Prince and The Pauper
- His mother explained to him her liberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she would settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax, brings in a good thousand a-year; offered even, when matters grew desperate, to make it twelve hundred; and in opposition to this, if he still persisted in this low connection, represented to him the certain penury that must attend the match.Jane Austen -- Sense and Sensibility
- Noting this penury,William Shakespeare -- Romeo and Juliet
- 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.Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- 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.Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre
- and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape
That ever penury, in contempt of manWilliam Shakespeare -- King Lear
penury = extreme poverty
penury = poverty
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = a state of extreme poverty
penuriousness = state of extreme poverty
(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means state or degree of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution
penury = poverty
penury = poverty (being out of money)
penury = poverty
penury = extreme poverty or destitution
penury = poverty
penury = extreme poverty
penurious = stingy (as though impoverished)
penury = a state of extreme poverty or destitution