How to use penniless in a sentence
10 example sentences · adjective
Penniless means lacking even the smallest amount of money. Example: “In societies without national insurance of any kind, almshouses are the last refuge of penniless people.”
Examples of penniless by meaning
adjectiveLacking 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.
- 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
adjectiveOf a country's system of money, abstaining from the use of penny coins, despite having fully decimalized currency, by...
- Canada became a penniless country in 2013 simply by rounding its cash transactions to the nearest nickel but otherwise not changing anything.
More sentences with penniless
- People think he's rich, but in fact he's nearly penniless.From the entry in fact
- Penniless and swept off your feet by a DILFy cowboy, all in the same day.”2021, Rachel Ember, “Lance” (chapter 10), in Signs of Spring, Chestnut Press. From the entry DILFy
- He came a cropper, and the girl was left an orphan and penniless.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 8. From the entry come a cropper
- Or Aunt Rosamund, with her perpetual rescuings of lost dogs, lame horses, and penniless musicians?1917, John Galsworthy, Beyond. From the entry rescuing
- Perla Lowell's marriage was a painful sham, so now—penniless and alone —she refuses to let this dark-hearted Greek intimidate her.2014, Maya Blake, What the Greek Can't Resist, →ISBN. From the entry dark-hearted
- As far as his ability to purchase the very necessities of life is concerned, he might as well be penniless.1930 September, Jay T. Stocking, “Immortal Money”, in Samuel McCrea Cavert, editor, Federal Council Bulletin: A Journal of Religious…. From the entry coin of the realm
Meaning of penniless
- adjective Lacking even the smallest amount of money.
- adjective 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).
Questions about penniless in a sentence
- How do you use penniless in a sentence?
- Penniless is used as an adjective. For example: “In societies without national insurance of any kind, almshouses are the last refuge of penniless people.”
- What is a short sentence with penniless?
- “People think he's rich, but in fact he's nearly penniless.”
- What does penniless mean?
- Penniless means lacking even the smallest amount of money.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: penniless (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use penniless in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/penniless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.