Dirt-poor

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    In a condition of extreme poverty. idiomatic, not-comparable

    "In recent months, the dirt-poor peasants of Honduras have invaded farms and blockaded bridges to force the government to fulfill its promises."

Example

More examples

"His parents were dirt-poor and could not afford to send their son to college."

Etymology

An inversion of the earlier poor as dirt (compare whip-smart or smart as a whip).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.