Word.ws English Dictionary

povo

povo adjective: poor, penniless.

Adjective

povo (comparative more povo, superlative most povo)

  1. (Australia, UK, derogatory, slang) Poor, penniless.
    • She went to some povo school down the street.
    • This is where, 30 years ago, the docking industry was destroyed, leading to one of the lengthiest industrial disputes in British history, causing a 20 per cent unemployment rate and casting Liverpool as a "povo city" (the jobless rate now stands at a respectable 4 per cent.)2003 October 8, Carol Midgley, “It's Grim Up North”, in The Times, number 67888, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4

Noun

povo (plural povos)

  1. (Australia, UK, derogatory, slang) One who is poor, a pauper.
    • This area is full of povos.
    Synonyms:
    pov

Examples of povo in a sentence

  • I've been spending time with him and his community in this really povo area in the Western suburbs [sc. of Sydney].2013, Chris Lilley, Ja'mie: Private School Girl, season 1, episode 3, spoken by Ja'mie King, HBO:
  • The school wasn’t exclusively populated by the children of haughty elitists who wanted their baby geniuses shielded from povo “flat rats” either, (although I suspect there was a bit of that).2017 June 17, Tara Kenny, “I was a poor kid at a wealthy private school. It gave me social mobility, but also a sense of shame”, in The...

Synonyms of povo

Forms of povo

Adjective
comparativemore povo
superlativemost povo
alternative formpovvo
Noun
pluralpovos

Origin of povo

Probably a blend of poverty + -o (diminutive suffix), owing to the term's Australian origins. Alternatively, borrowed from Portuguese povo (“common people; the working class”).

Questions about povo

What does povo mean?
Povo means poor, penniless.
How do you use povo in a sentence?
I've been spending time with him and his community in this really povo area in the Western suburbs [sc. of Sydney].
What part of speech is povo?
Povo can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near povo in the dictionary

  1. Povinelli
  2. Povinellis
  3. povitica
  4. poviticas
  5. Povkh
  6. povo
  7. povondraite
  8. povs
  9. povvo
  10. povvos
  11. pow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: povo (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-povvo.ogg.

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