Pov"er*ty (pŏv"ẽr*t?),
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.
The drunkard and the glutton shall come to
poverty.
Prov. xxiii. 21.
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.
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.
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.