| Poverty 1. (n.) The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need. 2. (n.) 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. Thesaurus Entries beggary, dearth, destitution, difficulty, distress, embarrassment, exigency, hand-to-mouth existence, hardship, impecuniousness, impoverishment, inadequacy, indigence, insolvency, insufficiency, juncture, lack, mendicancy, necessity, need, neediness, pass, paucity, pauperism, pennilessness, penury, pinch, poorness, privation, rareness, rarity, scant, scant sufficiency, scantiness, scarceness, scarcity, shortage, sparseness, sparsity, strait, suffering, uncommonness, unprosperousness, want |