Link Centre Dictionary

penury

pe·nury

UK/ˈpɛnjʊɹi/ US/ˈpɛnjəɹi/ uncommon obsolete

noun

1.

a state of extreme poverty or destitution

  • “their indigence appalled him”
  • “a general state of need exists among the homeless”
Synonyms

Origin

From Late Middle English penuri, penurie (“destitution, need, poverty; dearth, lack, scarcity”), borrowed from Latin pēnūria (“need, scarcity, want”) + Middle English -i, -ie (suffix forming abstract and collective nouns); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to paene (“almost, nearly; barely, hardly, scarcely”, adverb), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate; to hurt”).

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.