Word.ws English Dictionary

dirt-poor

dirt-poor adjective: in a condition of extreme poverty.

Adjective

dirt-poor (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) In a condition of extreme poverty.
    • In recent months, the dirt-poor peasants of Honduras have invaded farms and blockaded bridges to force the government to fulfill its promises.1975 August 18, “Religion: Blood and Land”, in Time
    • A few years ago it was a dirt-poor outpost populated by rural migrants.2007 August 4, “A critical election for ‘the best dressed man in Turkey’”, in The Week, 625, 16
    Antonyms:
    filthy rich

Antonyms of dirt-poor

Forms of dirt-poor

alternative formdirt poor

Origin of dirt-poor

An inversion of the earlier poor as dirt (compare whip-smart or smart as a whip).

Questions about dirt-poor

What does dirt-poor mean?
Dirt-poor means in a condition of extreme poverty.
What part of speech is dirt-poor?
Dirt-poor is an adjective.

Words near dirt-poor in the dictionary

  1. dirt yards
  2. dirt-box
  3. dirt-cheap
  4. dirt-dauber
  5. dirt-daubers
  6. dirt-poor
  7. dirt-stache
  8. dirtbag
  9. dirtbag left
  10. dirtbaggery
  11. dirtbaggy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dirt-poor (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-dirt-poor.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dirt-poor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dirt-poor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.