Poverty (p&obreve_;v&etilde_;rt&ybreve_;), 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.
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The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. Prov. xxiii. 21.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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