poor as a church mouse
poor as a church mouse adjective: very poor, to the point of starving or begging; utterly destitute.
Adjective
poor as a church mouse (not comparable)
- Very poor, to the point of starving or begging; utterly destitute.
- But to return to our public functions; that we have had a decided turn for the church appears from the fact that the church-mouse is a recognised order amongst us, and it is our just pride that we alone have preserved the genuine character of the institution as founded by the Apostles, inasmuch as...1844, a Mouse (sic), Le Peuple Souriquois: An Historical Sketch, in The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, vol. 71, pt. 2, page 428
- She was an Eastern Virginia woman, and, although poor as a church mouse, thought herself superior to West Virginia people.1879, John Beatty, The Citizen-Soldier, Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co., page 17
- Synonyms:
- poor as a rat, poor as Job, almsless, arm, badly off, bankrupt, beggared, beggarly, boracic, broke
poor as a church mouse meaning in Vietnamese
poor as a church mouse in Vietnamese
- very poor
- nghèo rớt mồng tơi
Examples of poor as a church mouse in a sentence
- "As poor as a poet" would be quite as comprehensible as "as poor as a church mouse."1932 April 9, Isidor Schneider, “Hard Luck Of Poets”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Feb 2026:
- "I'm poor as a church mouse, but I wake up a happy man," he says.2009 September 23, Mark Gould, quoting Paul Pulford, “Former heroin addict inspires growing optimism from the wild side”, in The Guardian...
Synonyms of poor as a church mouse
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
- impoverished
- in need
- indigent
- insolvent
- lower-class
- moneyless
- necessitous
- needy
- pauperized
- penniless
- penurious
- pinched
- pok kai
- poor
Origin of poor as a church mouse
Alteration of earlier hungry as a church mouse, from the fact that Catholic and Orthodox priests are called to scrupulously prevent any crumb of the sacrament of Eucharist (the bread which is understood to be Christ's body) from falling on the altar or to the ground, meaning that church mice had no crumbs to feed on. This phrase seems to be a corruption of the even earlier expression “as quiet as a church mouse” from the 1300s.
Questions about poor as a church mouse
- What does poor as a church mouse mean?
- Poor as a church mouse means very poor, to the point of starving or begging; utterly destitute.
- What is poor as a church mouse in Vietnamese?
- Poor as a church mouse in Vietnamese is nghèo rớt mồng tơi. See Poor as a church mouse meaning in Vietnamese.
- How do you use poor as a church mouse in a sentence?
- "As poor as a poet" would be quite as comprehensible as "as poor as a church mouse."
- What part of speech is poor as a church mouse?
- Poor as a church mouse is an adjective.
Words near poor as a church mouse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: poor as a church mouse (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-poor as a church mouse.ogg.
Cite this entry: “poor as a church mouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poor_as_a_church_mouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.