indigence
/ˈɪndɪdʒ(ə)ns
/noun [mass noun]
A state of extreme poverty; destitution: he did valuable work towards the relief of indigence...
- But you have placed yourself in this predicament through bad policy, and your indigence keeps you in it.
- Unsurprisingly, given the risk of arbitrary expropriation and extortion, the ordinary people responded by living in studied indigence.
- It was really begun by small boys who had very little cord and would put their indigence to rights by recklessly cutting down other people's kites.
Synonyms
poverty, penury, impoverishment, impecuniousness, impecuniosity, destitution, pennilessness, privation, hand-to-mouth existence, pauperism;
insolvency, bankruptcy, ruin, ruination;
need, neediness, want, reduced/straitened/narrow circumstances, dire straits, deprivation, disadvantage, hardship, distress, financial distress, difficulties;
beggary, mendicancy, vagrancy
rare pauperdom