Poor Meaning
/pʊɚ/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjWith no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries who do have them.
adjOf low quality.
Sentence Examples
Your poor memory is due to poor listening habits.
The rich have trouble as well as the poor.
They were too poor to buy shoes for the kids.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ family could not afford to buy enough food for the whole week.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The charity provided meals and shelter for ____ families who had lost their homes in the flood.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English povre, povere, from Old French (and Anglo-Norman) povre, poure, from Latin pauper, from Old Latin *pavo-pars (literally “getting little”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, small”). Doublet of pauper. displaced native wantsome, Middle English unlede (“poor”) (from Old English unlǣde), Middle English unweli, unwely (“poor, unwealthy”) (from Old English un- + weliġ (“well-to-do, prosperous, rich”)). and almost fully arm
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"England is growne to ſuch a paſſe of late,
That rich men triumph to ſee the poore beg at their gate."
— 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act I:
"When Owenism and Chartism had burned themselves out, England had become poorer by that substance out of which the Anglo-Saxon ideal of a free society could have been built up for centuries to come."
— 1957 [1944], Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Beacon Press: Boston, page 167:
"The poorest of the poor are truly destitute, with so few assets they are basically shackless."
— 2014, George W. Norton, Hunger and Hope: Escaping Poverty and Achieving Food Security in Developing ...:
"Durable goods can be cost-effective but make great disease vectors, and disposables like syringes and needles can be a problem in the poorest places, where there's desperate need of vaccines for diseases like polio. That's where the UCSD scientists come in."
— 2016 January 14, Jessica Hall, “Nanoengineers build 'microcannons' that fire light-up bullets filled with drugs”, in ExtremeTech, archived from the original on 24 Feb 2024:
"Because it’s considered relatively inexpensive, there’s an assumption that poor people eat more fast food than other socioeconomic groups – which has convinced some local governments to try to limit their access. […] The data showed becoming richer or poorer didn’t have much effect at all on how often people ate fast food."
— 2017 July 12, Jay L. Zagorsky, Patricia Smith, “No, poor people don’t eat the most fast food”, in CNN, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2024:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ family could not afford to buy enough food for the whole week.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The charity provided meals and shelter for ____ families who had lost their homes in the flood.