Poormouth

verb, slang

verb, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To claim to be poor. ambitransitive, informal

    "On the other hand one does not want to arrive “poor-mouthing it” in some outrageous turtleneck and West Eighth Street bell-jean combination, as if one is “funky” and of “the people.”"

Example

More examples

"On the other hand one does not want to arrive “poor-mouthing it” in some outrageous turtleneck and West Eighth Street bell-jean combination, as if one is “funky” and of “the people.”"

Etymology

From poor + mouth.

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