pennilessadj.n.

c1330 in R. H. Robbins Hist. Poems 14th & 15th Cent. (1959) 142 (MED) For þef is reue, þe lond is penyles.

?1406 T. Hoccleve La Mâle Règle 130 in E. P. Hammond Eng. Verse between Chaucer & Surrey (1927) 62/1 I were nakidly bystad By force of the penylees maladie.

c1450 (c1405) Mum & Sothsegger (BL Add. 41666) (1936) 21 Haue pitie on þe penylees and þoure pleynte harkeneth.

a1500 in Anglia (1930) 54 291 (MED) He ys pouyr & penyles, þat na gode hawys.

1562 J. Heywood Hundred Epigrammes xxiv. sig. B Thow art now peniles, as I was euen now.

1593 T. Lodge Life & Death William Longbeard 17 The peny father by his power should overpresse the penilesse in their poverties.

c1600 (?c1395) Pierce Ploughman's Crede (Trin. Cambr. R.3.15) (1873) 620 All þo blissed beþ..þat ben þe pore penyles.

1699 S. Garth Dispensary i. 10 Or where ill Poets Pennyless confer.

1751 S. Johnson Rambler No. 171. ⁋10 At length I became absolutely pennyless.

1798 M. Wollstonecraft Maria v. 123 Branded with shame, I was turned loose in the street, pennyless.

1824 Ld. Byron Deformed Transformed i. ii. 132 Though pennyless all.

1874 J. R. Green Short Hist. Eng. People ix. §8. 680 Either course must end in leaving the Government penniless.

1920 F. S. Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise i. ii. 87 Ten o'clock found them penniless. They had suppered greatly on their last eleven cents.

1953 E. Jones Sigmund Freud I. vii. 130 He must be a good fellow to marry a penniless girl; when he could have done better.

2002 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 19 Dec. 81/1 The early settlers were mostly penniless idealists.

1560 in W. H. Turner Select. Rec. Oxf. (1880) 284 Item, to..Sylvester Kechyn, for mending the peneles benche..ij s. iiij d.

1580 J. Lyly Euphues & his Eng. (new ed.) f. 11 Euery stoole he sate on, was penniles bench.

1596 Bp. W. Barlow tr. L. Lavater Three Christian Serm. i. 120 By which..they bring both their parentes and themselues vnto Peniless bench.

c1600 L. Hutton Antiq. Oxf. in C. Plummer Elizabethan Oxf. (1887) 86 On the left hand, under the East end of St. Martins Church, yee see that Seate, which is called Pennelesse Bench, builded by the Cittie, as well for their solace and prospect every waie, as for the conveniencie of the Market Women in the tyme of Raine.

a1640 P. Massinger City-Madam (1658) iv. sig. H1^v He shall not Sit long on pennilesse-bench.

1860 J. W. Warter Sea-board & Down II. 43 Though he have sometimes to sit on the Penniless Bench.

1931 Rev. Eng. Stud. 7 436 Further evidence of Middleton's local knowledge an allusion to ‘the Mayor's bench at Oxford,’ Penniless Bench.

1993 J. Morris Oxford ii. ix. 98 There used to be a place called Penniless Bench, where the indigent assembled for comfort or charity in the shadow of Carfax Tower.

1890 G. Saintsbury Ess. Eng. Lit. (1891) 308 Did he really journey pennilessly down to Eton?

1995 Ld. Shawcross Life Sentence xii. 234 He faced his 8-year sentence bravely and pennilessly.

1852 H. Melville Pierre xxv. 461 In the hour of his clamorous pennilessness, he was additionally goaded into an enterprise..of all things least calculated for pecuniary profit in the end.

1951 D. Thomas Let. 15 Sept. (1987) 809 I took the detested poem to a magazine and sold it there and then and bought a present, vainly to try to lessen the pennilessness of my arrival.

2003 Times (Nexis) 15 July The police are bound to find that pennilessness leads to increased crime and begging.