poor

(po͝or)

adj. poor·er, poor·est

a. Having insufficient wealth to meet the necessities or comforts of life or to live in a manner considered acceptable in a society.

b. Relating to or characterized by poverty: the poor side of town.

2. Deficient or lacking in a specified resource or quality: an area poor in timber and coal; a diet poor in calcium.

3. Not adequate in quality or quantity; inferior: a poor performance; poor wages.

4. Negative, unfavorable, or disapproving: has a poor opinion of the mayor.

5. Undernourished; lean. Used especially of animals.

6. Humble; meek: "Let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart be glad" (John Greenleaf Whittier).

7. Eliciting or deserving pity; pitiable: couldn't rescue the poor fellow.

n. (used with a pl. verb)

Poor people considered as a group: The urban poor are in need of homes.

[Middle English poure, from Old French povre, from Latin pauper; see pau- in Indo-European roots.]

poor′ness n.

Usage Note: In informal speech poor is sometimes used as an adverb, as in They never played poorer. In formal usage more poorly would be required in this example.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	poorness - the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions impoverishment, poverty financial condition - the condition of (corporate or personal) finances deprivation, neediness, privation, want - a state of extreme poverty destitution - a state without friends or money or prospects indigence, pauperism, pauperization, penury, need - a state of extreme poverty or destitution; "their indigence appalled him"; "a general state of need exists among the homeless" impecuniousness, pennilessness, penuriousness - a state of lacking money
	2.	poorness - less than adequate; "the relative poorness of New England farmland" aridity, barrenness, fruitlessness - the quality of yielding nothing of value
	3.	poorness - the quality of being meager; "an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes"-George Eliot exiguity, leanness, meagerness, meagreness, scantiness, scantness inadequacy, deficiency, insufficiency - lack of an adequate quantity or number; "the inadequacy of unemployment benefits" wateriness - meagerness or poorness connoted by a superfluity of water (in a literary style as well as in a food); "the haziness and wateriness of his disquisitions"; "the wateriness of his blood"; "no one enjoys the burning of his soup or the wateriness of his potatoes" abstemiousness - restricted to bare necessities spareness, sparseness, sparsity, thinness - the property of being scanty or scattered; lacking denseness
	4.	poorness - the quality of being poorly made or maintained; "she was unrecognizable because of the poorness of the photography" low quality, inferiority - an inferior quality

Translations

بُؤْس ، فَقْر

chudoba

fattigdom

fátækt

poorness

[ˈpʊənɪs] N

1. (= poverty) → pobreza f

2. (= poor quality) → mala calidad f
poorness of spirit → apocamiento m, mezquindad f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

poorness

(= lack of money) → Armut f

(= lack of quality) → Dürftigkeit f, → Mangelhaftigkeit f; (of soil) → Magerkeit f, → Unergiebigkeit f; (of effort, excuse, harvest, performance) → Dürftigkeit f; (of quality) → Minderwertigkeit f; (of weather, memory, health, eyesight) → Unzulänglichkeit f; (of leadership) → Schwäche f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

poorness

[ˈpʊənɪs] n (lack of wealth) → povertà; (of crop, light) → scarsità; (of effort, excuse, accommodation) → insufficienza, inadeguatezza; (of health) → debolezza

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

poor

(puə) adjective

1. having little money or property. She is too poor to buy clothes for the children; the poor nations of the world.

2. not good; of bad quality. His work is very poor; a poor effort.

3. deserving pity. Poor fellow!

ˈpoorness noun

ˈpoorly adverb

not well; badly. a poorly written essay.

adjective

ill. He is very poorly.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

(which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus well calleth them), to him, a habit of dissimulation is a hinderance and a poorness. But if a man cannot obtain to that judgment, then it is left to bim generally, to be close, and a dissembler.

View in context

On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day -- On the nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number -- On the vast lapse of time, as inferred from the rate of deposition and of denudation -- On the poorness of our palaeontological collections -- On the intermittence of geological formations -- On the absence of intermediate varieties in any one formation -- On the sudden appearance of groups of species -- On their sudden appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous strata.

View in context

But whether so or not, I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding-school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age or it may be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my life.'

'If you refer, then, to the poorness of your blood--'

View in context

This poorness of the vegetation is owing to the quantity of saline matter with which the soil is impregnated.

View in context

I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces.

View in context

It was about a story full of emotions, like pain and poorness, from the eyes of a child.

A minute with DE-riye GE[micro]kcebay- Linguist

There are certain endogenous substances that balance the nervous transmission that determines harmony or establish an imbalance between the positive emotions (bliss, happiness, love, and solidarity) and the negative emotions (sadness, rage, pain, hatred, vengeance, and extreme poorness), concerning the mind and the emotions though acts.

Understanding science in the service and care of mental health and disorders

Was he not him who insisted that his progeny had all the human rights to expose what One-Touche does in darkness and in light, in sickness and in health, in richness and in poorness, for better or for west, vowing to pull him down from that sickly camel he rides on, until his death will Tiger-Nuts stop?

Letter to Snr. Opupulepu (28) Waist-Band on Alhaji One-Touches Waist

relation with "the rich": poorness exists because richness

Ecumenism and the Will-for-Friendship: A Contribution from Latin America

Some weaknesses of laser scanning, such as poorness of capturing soft tissue surface texture, make this technique more suitable for scanning dental casts.

Three-Dimensional Imaging in Orthodontics