penury
/ˈpɛnjʊɹi/ · noun
Meaning
- Extreme need or want; destitution, poverty; (countable) an instance of this.
- Often followed by of: a lack of something; a dearth, a scarcity.
- The quality of being miserly; miserliness, parsimoniousness, stinginess.
Etymology / origin
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”).
- *peh₁-(ine-pro)→
- pēnūria(la)→
- penuri(enm)→
- penury (English)
- Relations: inh, der, der
Related words
Descendant words
- penuria(Spanish) (cog)
Sources
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