1
Severely poor community
Lacking the income and resources needed for a secure standard of living.
Example
The programme directs medical services to impoverished rural districts.
impoverished
/ɪmˈpɒvərɪʃt/ · im-POV-uh-rishtadjective
Very poor or seriously deprived of resources, quality, or richness.
Use impoverished for people or communities in severe poverty and, figuratively, for systems stripped of richness or variety.
What impoverished Really Means
The word becomes easier to use when its closely related senses are separated and compared.
2
Resource-depleted system
Seriously reduced in material or biological richness.
Example
Repeated planting left the soil impoverished and prone to erosion.
3
Lacking intellectual richness
Thin, restricted, or deprived of variety in an abstract sense.
Example
The critic called the account impoverished because it ignored local testimony.
Use impoverished Naturally
Notice how the surrounding noun or clause reveals the exact shade of meaning.
The programme directs medical services to impoverished rural districts.
Repeated planting left the soil impoverished and prone to erosion.
The critic called the account impoverished because it ignored local testimony.
Precision Matters
Impoverished overlaps with several common words, but each carries a different emphasis.
impoverished
vs.Describes the resulting state of serious deprivation.
deplete
Describes the process of reducing a supply.
impoverished
vs.May describe a person, place, or system lacking resources.
paucity
Names a scarcity of a particular thing.
impoverished
vs.Lacks money or resources.
lucrative
Produces considerable profit—the contrast.
impoverished
vs.Describes severe deprivation.
resilient
Describes capacity to recover from difficulty.
Test impoverished in Context
The soil has been seriously deprived of nutrients and richness.
1
Decades of intensive farming left the once fertile soil ___, with little organic matter or mineral content remaining.