What is another word for penury?

Pronunciation: [pˈɛnjʊɹi] (IPA)

Penury is a term that describes a state of extreme poverty or destitution. If you are looking for synonyms for the word penury, they could include scarcity, want, need, indigence, privation, hardship, destitution, poverty, pauperism, insolvency, beggary, mendicancy, or impecuniousness. These words all describe situations where a person is lacking in basic necessities such as food, shelter, or clothing. They are often associated with socio-economic inequality and can be caused by a variety of factors including unemployment, illness, or natural disasters. By understanding the different synonyms for penury, we can better describe and understand the complex issues that lead to poverty and strive to find solutions to alleviate it.

Synonyms for Penury:

What are the paraphrases for Penury?

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What are the hypernyms for Penury?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

What are the opposite words for penury?

Penury means extreme poverty, insufficiency or severe lack of resources. Its antonyms convey the opposite meanings of abundance, wealth, prosperity, and sufficiency. Prosperity signifies a condition of continued and sustained success or growth, while affluence refers to a state of great economic abundance and dependence. Luxury, opulence, and lavishness are synonyms for wealth, indicating opulent and extravagant ways of life. Adequacy, sufficiency, and plenty refer to circumstances where resources are sufficient to meet basic needs abundantly. Competence, ability, and capability indicate a state of skill or capacity that allows one to accomplish tasks with ease. Overall, the antonyms of penury refer to positive and desirable states of life, whereas penury itself is a state of deprivation and lack.

What are the antonyms for Penury?

Usage examples for Penury

It was to meet this distress, unparalleled since the Middle Ages, that Lord John wrote from Edinburgh his famous Free Trade letter to his London constituents, urging them to clamour for the only remedy, "to unite to put an end to a system which has proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people."
"Lady-John-Russell"
MacCarthy, Desmond
There was a double knock at the door, and Denville went softly down, leaving Claire with a fresh agony to battle against, for, few as had been her father's words, they had been sufficiently plain to make her ask herself whether it was not her duty to give up everything-to sell herself, as it were, to this old nobleman, that her father might be saved from penury, and her sister placed beyond the reach of want; for her home must in future be with them.
"The Master of the Ceremonies"
George Manville Fenn
There is no other palace in the world which is so rich in hoarded treasures as the Vatican, the thrice voluptuous Roman home of the Pope, where he lives surrounded by a populace which leads a life of penury and semi-starvation.
"The Story of Malta"
Maturin M. Ballou

Famous quotes with Penury

  • Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.
    M. H. Abrams
  • I could issue manifestos summoning seraphim to revolt against the Haavenly State we're in, or trumpets to summon American mankind to rebellion against the Authority which has frozen all skulls in the cold war, That is, I could, make sense, invoke politics and try organize a union of opinion about what to do to Cuba, China, Russia, Bolivia, New Jersey, etc. However since in America the folks are convinced their heaven is all right, those manifestos make no dent except in giving authority & courage to the small band of hipsters who are disaffected like gentle socialists. Meanwhile the masses the proletariat the people are smug and the source of the great Wrong. So the means then is to communicate to the grand majority- and say I or anybody did write a balanced documented account not only of the lives of America but the basic theoretical split from the human body as Reich has done- But the people are so entrenched in their present livelihood that all the facts in the world-such as that China will be 1/4 of world pop makes no impression at all as a national political fact that intelligent people can take counsel on and deal with humorously & with magnificence. So that my task as a politician is to dynamite the emotional rockbed of inertia and spiritual deadness that hangs over the cities and makes everybody unconsciously afraid of the cops- To enter the Soul on a personal level and shake the emotion with the Image of some giant reality-of any kind however irrelevant to transient political issue- to touch & wake the soul again- That soul which is asleep or hidden in armor or unable to manifest itself as free life of God on earth- To remind by chord of deep groan of the Unknown to most Soul- then further politics will take place when people seize power over their universe and end the long dependence on an external authority or rhetorical set sociable emotions-so fixed they don't admit basic personal life changes-like not being afraid of jails and penury, while wandering thru gardens in high civilization.
    Allen Ginsberg
  • The story of English literature, viewed aesthetically, is one thing; the story of English writers is quite another. The price of contributing to the greatest literature the world has ever seen is often struggle and penury: art is still too often its own reward. It is salutary sometimes to think of the early deaths of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Chatterton, Dylan Thomas, of the Grub Street struggles of Dr. Johnson, the despair of Gissing and Francis Thompson. That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.
    Anthony Burgess
  • The poor child, as Charles Lamb so touchingly expresses it, is not brought, but "dragged out," and if the wits are sharpened, so, too, is the soft, round cheek. The crippled limb and broken constitution attest the effects of the over-early struggle with penury; but the child of rich parents suffers, though in another way; there is the heart that is crippled, by the selfishness of indulgence and the habit of relying upon others. It takes years of harsh contact with the realities of life to undo the enervating work of a spoilt and over aided childhood. We cannot too soon learn the strong and useful lessons of exertion and self-dependance.
    Letitia Elizabeth Landon
  • In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest—usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation—and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
    John Millington Synge

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