Loading page
say it: poor
poor is an adjective and noun meaning "deserving or inciting pity". It is pronounced /ˈpuɹ/ — poor. It carries 6 recorded senses.
deserving or inciting pity
“a hapless victim”
“miserable victims of war”
“the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic”
“piteous appeals for help”
“pitiable homeless children”
“a pitiful fate”
“Oh, you poor thing”
“his poor distorted limbs”
“a wretched life”
lacking in quality or substances
“a poor land”
“the area was poor in timber and coal”
“food poor in nutritive value”
“the food in the cafeteria was of poor quality”
of insufficient quantity to meet a need
“an inadequate income”
“a poor salary”
“money is short”
“on short rations”
“food is in short supply”
“short on experience”
“the jejune diets of the very poor”
people without possessions or wealth (considered as a group)
“the urban poor need assistance”
plural
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for poor come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.