penury
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Late Middle English penuri, penurie (“destitution, need, poverty; dearth, lack, scarcity”), borrowed from Latin pēnūria (“need, scarcity, want”) + Middle English -i, -ie (suffix forming abstract and collective nouns); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to paene (“almost, nearly; barely, hardly, scarcely”, adverb), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate; to hurt”).
Inflected forms:
form: penuries
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Extreme need or want; destitution, poverty; (countable) an instance of this.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: As he [Jesus] behelde⸝ he ſawe the ryche men⸝ howe they caſt in their offeringꝭ [offeringis] into the treſury. He ſawe alſo a certayne povre widdowe⸝ which caſt ĩ [in] thydre two mytes. And he ſaid: of a trueth I ſaye vnto you⸝ this povre widdowe hath putt in moare thẽ [then, i.e., than] they all. For they all have of their ſuperfluyte added vnto the offeringe off God: But ſhe⸝ of her penury⸝ hath caſt in all the ſubſtaunce that ſhe hadde.
[W]hat prodigall portion haue I ſpent, that I ſhould come to ſuch penury?
In all labour there is profit: but the talke of the lippes tendeth onely to penury.
[N]ow God comes to thee, […] as the sun in noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.
The poore people in Corinth did ſee, and ſmell, vvhat the rich men taſted, Tantalizing all the vvhile, and having their penury doubled by the Antiperiſtaſis of others plenty; yea, ryot and exceſſe, for ſome of them vvere drunken.
Chill Penury repreſs'd their noble rage, / And froze the genial current of the ſoul.
Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out the cheque, read over and over the ten thousand dollars written across it in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of the pen.
It may be that she still resented his indifference to those early struggles which, even now, she shuddered to recall. For a governess’ life she had been, indeed, notably unfit. Hard she had thought it, that penury should force her back into the school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and maps and conjugations she had never tried to master..
The hardship, penury and hunger of the early 1930s is etched in the collective memory of older Americans.
Scrayingham: The churchyard nine miles north-east of York is the last resting place of 'Railway King' George Hudson, who died 150 years ago on December 14. He was responsible for the development of much of the UK's railway network but became financially overstretched. He was found guilty of fraud, was imprisoned, and spent his final years in penury.
gloss: Often followed by of: a lack of something; a dearth, a scarcity.
pos: noun
tags: countable
poetic
usually
examples: VVith theſe and many others as conſiderable, vvhich partly vvillingly, and partly in the penury of Books, forgettingly I paſſe, […]
In early youth I laboured under a peculiar embarrassment and penury of words, which I sought to convey my thoughts adequately upon interesting subjects: […]
No! penury, inertness and grimace, / In some strange sort, were the land's portion.
Miseries are the quasi-animal penuries of human beings (hunger, disease, death, etc.); disquiets are the penuries specific to human beings (solitude, disappointment, frustration, etc.); and sufferings are a combination of miseries and disquiets.
gloss: The quality of being miserly; miserliness, parsimoniousness, stinginess.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
uncountable
usually
examples: God ſometimes puniſhes one ſinne vvith another; pride vvith adultery, drunkenneſſe vvith murder, careleſeneſſe vvith irreligion, idleneſſe vvith vanity, penury vvith oppreſſion, irreligion vvith blaſphemy, and that vvith Atheiſme, and therefore it is no vvonder if he puniſhes a ſinner by a ſinner.
Let them not ſtill be obſtinately blind, / Still to divert the Good thou haſt deſign'd, / Or vvith Malignant penury, / To ſterve the Royal Vertues of his Mind.
Jenk[ins]. Prithee, novv you are in Spirits, give me a Portrait of Sir Penurious; […] I knovv no more of him than the common Country Converſation; that he is a thrifty, vvary Man. / Har[top]. The very Abſtract of Penury!
Related words: penurious
penuriously
penuriousness
Derived words: penured
penurous
Translations: