Word
poverty stricken
Phoneticspover·ty-strick·en
Definition
adj. extremely poor; having almost no money or basic necessities. You often use this to describe families, areas, or countries that suffer from severe poverty.
adj. suffering from severe economic deprivation; destitute. Typically used attributively to describe individuals, families, or regions experiencing extreme material hardship.
Examples
“The poverty-stricken village lacks clean water.”
“International aid organizations sent food packages to the poverty-stricken region after the drought destroyed the harvest.”
“The novel depicts poverty-stricken coal miners whose daily struggle for survival gradually hardens into a quiet, desperate rage against the company town's exploitative system.”
Examples
simple
“The poverty-stricken village lacks clean water.”
contextual
“International aid organizations sent food packages to the poverty-stricken region after the drought destroyed the harvest.”
complex
“The novel depicts poverty-stricken coal miners whose daily struggle for survival gradually hardens into a quiet, desperate rage against the company town's exploitative system.”
Usage
Primarily used attributively before the noun it modifies; predicative use (*the area is poverty-stricken) is grammatically acceptable but less frequent in formal registers.
Etymology
Formed from 'poverty' (from Old French 'poverte', from Latin 'paupertas' meaning 'poorness') and 'stricken' (the past participle of 'strike', from Old English 'strīcan' meaning 'to stroke or afflict'). The compound emerged in the early 19th century, using 'stricken' in the sense of being afflicted or hit by a harmful condition, parallel to formations like 'panic-stricken' and 'grief-stricken'.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/poverty-stricken