penury

== English == === Etymology === 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”). === Pronunciation === (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈpɛnjʊɹi/ (General American) IPA(key): /ˈpɛnjəɹi/ Hyphenation: pen‧u‧ry === Noun === penury (usually uncountable, plural penuries) (uncountable) Extreme need or want; destitution, poverty; (countable) an instance of this. (countable, now chiefly poetic) Often followed by of: a lack of something; a dearth, a scarcity. Synonyms: barrenness, insufficiency (uncountable, obsolete) The quality of being miserly; miserliness, parsimoniousness, stinginess. ==== Derived terms ==== penured (obsolete) penurous ==== Related terms ==== penurious penuriously penuriousness ==== Translations ==== === References === === Further reading === extreme poverty on Wikipedia.Wikipedia Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “penury”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. === Anagrams === pruney