indigence
noun
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Is your vocabulary impoverished by a lack of synonyms for indigence? We can help. Poverty, penury, want, and destitution all describe the state of someone who is lacking in key resources. Poverty covers the range from severe lack of basic necessities to an absence of material comforts ("the refugees lived in extreme poverty"). Penury suggests a cramping or oppressive lack of money ("illness condemned him to years of penury"). Want and destitution imply extreme, even life-threatening, poverty ("lived in a perpetual state of want"; "the widespread destitution in countries beset by famine"). Indigence, which descends from a Latin verb meaning "to need," implies seriously straitened circumstances and usually connotes the endurance of many hardships and the lack of comforts.
Synonyms
- beggary
- destituteness
- destitution
- impecuniosity
- impecuniousness
- impoverishment
- necessity
- need
- neediness
- pauperism
- penuriousness
- penury
- poorness
- poverty
- want
Example Sentences
Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, 20 June 2022 Black and Hispanic Americans escaped indigence in record numbers. Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2022 His children, three former child prodigies, are to blame for his financial indigence. CNN, 13 Dec. 2021 William Booth’s famous poverty maps, which the social reformer used to catalogue affluence and indigence in late Victorian London, don’t extend this far south. Washington Post, 12 Feb. 2021 Under Harris County’s rigid and misguided risk-assessment system, indicators of indigence received the same point values as a history of criminal violations or prior failures to appear in court. Gilbert Garcia, ExpressNews.com, 12 Feb. 2020 Amazing that a handful of ’em haven’t been assessed five-minute majors for loitering or indigence. BostonGlobe.com, 21 Oct. 2019 If the prototypical American was white and middle class, and my parents’ Chinese accents and indigence marked them as irredeemably fresh off the boat, what chance was there for someone like me to achieve Americanness? Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker, 16 Sep. 2019 Northwell prefers not to call the Food as Health Center a pantry, concerned that the term might connote indigence. Lucette Lagnado, WSJ, 22 Oct. 2018 See More Word History
14th century, in the meaning defined above
Legal Definition
indigence
noun
indigence
noun
Synonyms & Similar Words
- poverty
- pauperism
- impoverishment
- penury
- poorness
- beggary
- destitution
- misery
- necessity
- neediness
- impecuniousness
- impecuniosity
- deprivation
- penuriousness
- need
- privation
- wretchedness
- exigency
- destituteness
- bankruptcy
- woe
- emergency
- want
- gutter
- insolvency
- rainy day
- pinching
- straitening
- austerity
- belt-tightening
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
- affluence
- opulence
- wealth
- richness
- wealthiness
- prosperity
- luxury
Synonym Chooser
Some common synonyms of indigence are destitution, penury, poverty, and want. While all these words mean "the state of one with insufficient resources," indigence implies seriously straitened circumstances.
The words penury and indigence are synonyms, but do differ in nuance. Specifically, penury suggests a cramping or oppressive lack of money.
In some situations, the words poverty and indigence are roughly equivalent. However, poverty may cover a range from extreme want of necessities to an absence of material comforts.
Both want and destitution imply extreme poverty that threatens life itself through starvation or exposure.