Definitions
a state of extreme poverty or destitution
Word origin
From Late Middle English penuri, penurie (“destitution, need, poverty; dearth, lack, scarcity”), borrowed from Latin pēnūria (“need, scarcity, want”) + Middle English -i, -ie (suffix forming abstract and collective nouns); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to paene (“almost, nearly; barely, hardly, scarcely”, adverb), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate; to hurt”).
Used in a sentence
“[W]hat prodigall portion haue I ſpent, that I ſhould come to ſuch penury?”
“In all labour there is profit: but the talke of the lippes tendeth onely to penury.”
“[N]ow God comes to thee, […] as the sun in noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.”
Source: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
Used as a crossword answer2 curated clues
01“Dire poverty”6 letters
02“Extreme poverty”6 letters
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