penniless
/ˈpɛ.nɪ.ləs/
penniless adjective: lacking even the smallest amount of money.
Adjective
penniless (not comparable)
- Lacking even the smallest amount of money.
- In societies without national insurance of any kind, almshouses are the last refuge of penniless people.
- In a functioning digital economy, being cashless is far different from being penniless, because cash is merely one form of money; but some preppers hoard gold in case the system gets destroyed and cashlessness suddenly becomes pennilessness.
- Synonyms:
- farthingless, moneyless, destitute, nillionaire, almsless, arm, badly off, bankrupt, beggared, beggarly
- Of a country's system of money, abstaining from the use of penny coins, despite having fully decimalized currency, by means of rounding of cash transactions (but not necessarily of cashless ones).
- Canada became a penniless country in 2013 simply by rounding its cash transactions to the nearest nickel but otherwise not changing anything.
penniless meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
penniless in Hindi
- utterly without money
- निकौड़िया nikauṛiyā
penniless in Tamil
- பணமற்ற, பொருளற்ற
penniless in Urdu
- فقیر, کنگال, کورا
penniless in Bengali
- utterly without money
- নিকড়িয়া nikoṛiẏa, কপর্দকশূন্য kopordokśunno
More languagesFewer languages
- penniless in Malayalam
- ദരിദ്രനായ, നിർദ്ധനനായ
- penniless in Kannada
- ಕಾಸಿಲ್ಲದ, ಹಣವಿಲ್ಲದ, ದರಿದ್ರ, ಬಡವನಾದ
- penniless in Odia
- ଅକଉଡ଼ିଆ akauṛiā, ଖାଲି khāli
- penniless in Arabic
- فقير
- penniless in Malay
- fakir
- penniless in Indonesian
- melarat, fakir
Examples of penniless in a sentence
- A dollar and a quarter seems a small sum, but if you are absolutely penniless it might as well be a thousand.1889, Horatio Alger, chapter 10, in Driven From Home:
- Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
Synonyms of penniless
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- boracic
- broke
- broken
- broker than the Ten Commandments
- dirt poor
- disadvantaged
- down and out
- down at heel
- down on one's luck
- down on one's uppers
- empty-handed
- feeling the pinch
- flat
- goodless
- hard up
- impecunious
- impoverished
- in need
- indigent
- insolvent
- lower-class
- necessitous
- needy
- pauperized
- penurious
- pinched
- pok kai
- poor
- poor as a church mouse
- poor as a rat
Forms of penniless
| alternative form | pennyless |
|---|
Origin of penniless
From Middle English penyles, penylees; equivalent to penny + -less. Compare Old Norse penningalauss (“penniless”).
Words formed from penniless
Questions about penniless
- What does penniless mean?
- Penniless means lacking even the smallest amount of money.
- What is penniless in Hindi?
- Penniless in Hindi is निकौड़िया (nikauṛiyā). See Penniless meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use penniless in a sentence?
- A dollar and a quarter seems a small sum, but if you are absolutely penniless it might as well be a thousand.
- What part of speech is penniless?
- Penniless is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce penniless?
- Penniless is pronounced /ˈpɛ.nɪ.ləs/.
Words near penniless in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: penniless (page history and authors); penniless (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); penniless (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); penniless (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); penniless (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ଅକଉଡ଼ିଆ (Odia) (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)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-penniless.wav.
Cite this entry: “penniless.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/penniless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.