impoverished
Syllables: im·pov·er·ished/ɪmˈpɒv(ə)ɹɪʃt/US/ɪmˈpɑvəɹɪʃt/
impoverished adjective: reduced to poverty. Also the simple past and past participle of impoverish.
Adjective
impoverished (comparative more impoverished, superlative most impoverished)
- Reduced to poverty.
- Synonyms:
- poor
- Lacking in richness, diversity or health.
- The impoverished soil here can not support any crop.
- Having lost a component, ingredient, faculty or feature; rendered poor in some attribute; depleted.
- English has an impoverished inflectional system.
- [I]t was out of print for 28 years, before an edition (now rare) was published in 1960, impoverished by having all citations removed.2018, James Lambert, “Setting the Record Straight: An In-depth Examination of Hobson-Jobson”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 31, number 4, →DOI, page 488
- Represented by few species.
- The fossil record from this era is impoverished.
Also used as
impoverished is also the simple past and past participle of impoverish.
Examples of impoverished in a sentence
- A prudent man is not impoverished by his liberalities.
- But then again, after Amin’s regime, which had left the Ganda desperately impoverished, things were changing.
- Impoverished, disenfranchised, the mangas lived by petty crime and occasional labor.
Synonyms of impoverished
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- broken
- broker than the Ten Commandments
- destitute
- dirt poor
- disadvantaged
- down and out
- down at heel
- down on one's luck
- down on one's uppers
- empty-handed
- farthingless
- feeling the pinch
- flat
- goodless
- hard up
- impecunious
- in need
- indigent
- insolvent
- lower-class
- moneyless
- necessitous
- needy
- pauperized
- penniless
- penurious
- pinched
- pok kai
- poor as a church mouse
- poor as a rat
Antonyms
2 more antonymsFewer antonyms
Forms of impoverished
| comparative | more impoverished |
|---|---|
| superlative | most impoverished |
Words formed from impoverished
Questions about impoverished
- What does impoverished mean?
- Impoverished means reduced to poverty.
- What part of speech is impoverished?
- Impoverished is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce impoverished?
- Impoverished is pronounced /ɪmˈpɑvəɹɪʃt/ (US).
Words near impoverished in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: impoverished (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-impoverished.wav.
Cite this entry: “impoverished.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/impoverished. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.