Word.ws English Dictionary

broker than the Ten Commandments

broker than the Ten Commandments adjective: extremely impoverished.

Adjective

broker than the Ten Commandments (comparative form only)

  1. (comparative-only, dated, humorous, simile) Extremely impoverished.
    • I needed money—Dad would have said I was broker than the Ten Commandments—so I went to get my old job back...2018, Tara Westover, Educated
    Synonyms:
    impoverished

Synonyms of broker than the Ten Commandments

Origin of broker than the Ten Commandments

A pun on the sense of broke 'without money' and broken, with potential reference both to Moses' destruction ('breaking') of the tablets on Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:19) and sinners' violation ('breaking') of the Ten Commandments in daily life.

Questions about broker than the Ten Commandments

What does broker than the Ten Commandments mean?
Broker than the Ten Commandments means extremely impoverished.
What part of speech is broker than the Ten Commandments?
Broker than the Ten Commandments is an adjective.

Words near broker than the Ten Commandments in the dictionary

  1. brokenness
  2. brokennesses
  3. Brokenshell
  4. Brokenshire
  5. broker
  6. broker than the Ten Commandments
  7. broker-dealer
  8. broker-dealers
  9. brokerable
  10. brokerage
  11. brokerages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: broker than the Ten Commandments (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-broker than the Ten Commandments.ogg.

Cite this entry: “broker than the Ten Commandments.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/broker_than_the_ten_commandments. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.