Pauper

//ˈpɔː.pə// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who is extremely poor.

    "He has hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, and he lives like a pauper!"

  2. 2
    a person who is very poor wordnet
  3. 3
    One living on or eligible for public charity.
Verb
  1. 1
    To make a pauper of; to drive into poverty. transitive

    "“There’s no sense in you paupering yourself because you’re too stubborn to take my money.” ¶ “I’m not paupering myself.”"

Synonyms

All synonyms
almsmanalmswomanbankruptbankruptbeggarbeggar

Example

More examples

"The pauper was begging for a living."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin pauper (“poor”). Originally a legal term. Doublet of poor.

Related phrases

pauper's funeralpauper's grave

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