Dictionary

pauperize en · VERB

Etymology

Etymology tree English pauper Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)bor. Late Latin -izōder. Middle French -iserbor. Middle English -isen English -ize English pauperize From pauper + -ize.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To make someone a pauper; to impoverish.
   • He (Lee Kuan Yew) and his associates jailed opponents or pauperized them through civil court cases alleging slander or other misdemeanors. 2015 March 30, “Lee Kuan Yew’s Enigma: Authoritarian Yet a Kind of Democrat”, in CSIS:
   • Burdocks, thistles, dwarf oaks, cottonweed, chalky holes and whitish puddles everywhere. It was all pauperized. The very bushes might have been on welfare. 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, pages 22–23:
   • This is an Education which consists in the outleading of the blackguardizing, pauperizing, vagrant-like, and theftuous elements of the mentality, entirely withdrawn, and apart from any moral guidance, any elevating tendency, any ameliorating influence, nay, directly under the direction of the demoralized and the abandoned. 1851, Philomathos, “Ought Government to Provide a Secular Education For the People?”, in The British Controversialist: And Literary Magazine, number 13, page 351:

Forms

Deriveds

unpauperized · dispauperize · depauperize · pauperizer · pauperization

Synonyms

depauperate · destitute · depauperize · ruin · immiserate · impoverish · poor · beggar · beggar · poverish · pauperize · embeggar · destitute · impoor · depauperate · empoverish