immiserate
/ɪˈmɪzəɹeɪt/
immiserate verb: to impoverish (someone); to make someone sink into misery.
Verb
immiserate (third-person singular simple present immiserates, present participle immiserating, simple past and past participle immiserated)
- To impoverish (someone); to make someone sink into misery.
- By far the most powerful dynamic conception of capitalism as a system wracked by unavoidable change is the classic Marxian view in which a working class is first immiserated, then disciplined, finally goaded beyond endurance by a system that systematically exploits and deceives it.1971 November 28, Robert L. Heilbroner, “Phase II of the Capitalist System”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- The fun, pleasurable aspect of playbor troubles scholars because it seems to suggest that playborers are not exploited; exploitation is supposed to be immiserating, not fun.2018 January 16, Greg Goldberg, Antisocial Media: Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 51
- Synonyms:
- depauperate, destitute, pauperize, beggar, depauperize, embeggar, empoverish, impoor, impoverish, poor
Examples of immiserate in a sentence
- Higher inequality, in part the result of a real estate boom that immiserated some and enriched others, meant more wealth in the hands of the high-saving rich.2020, Thomas Orlik, China: The Bubble that Never Pops, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 76:
- These regimes will favor older people and contain and immiserate the young.2021, Michael Harris, Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN:
Synonyms of immiserate
Forms of immiserate
| third-person singular present | immiserates |
|---|---|
| present participle | immiserating |
| past participle | immiserated |
| past | immiserated |
Origin of immiserate
Back-formation from immiseration.
Questions about immiserate
- What does immiserate mean?
- Immiserate means to impoverish (someone); to make someone sink into misery.
- How do you use immiserate in a sentence?
- Higher inequality, in part the result of a real estate boom that immiserated some and enriched others, meant more wealth in the hands of the high-saving rich.
- What part of speech is immiserate?
- Immiserate is a verb.
- How do you pronounce immiserate?
- Immiserate is pronounced /ɪˈmɪzəɹeɪt/.
- What is the past tense of immiserate?
- The past tense of immiserate is immiserated.
Words near immiserate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: immiserate (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.
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Cite this entry: “immiserate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/immiserate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.