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in straitened circumstances

adj. not having enough money to pay for necessities [syn: hard up, impecunious, in straitened circumstances(p), penniless, penurious, pinched]

Usage examples of "in straitened circumstances".

The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances.

It is a melancholy reflection, Nell, but I fear I shouldn't be a very good wife for a man in straitened circumstances.

So ended the poor maid's humble little tale--whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.

Even in straitened circumstances a girl of good class, like Josephine, would certainly have been taught history and geography, given good books to read and listened intelligently to talks on the radio.

Swiveller to say, that, although the expenses of her education kept him in straitened circumstances for half a dozen years, he never slackened in his zeal, and always held himself sufficiently repaid by the accounts he heard (with great gravity) of her advancement, on his monthly visits to the governess, who looked upon him as a literary gentleman of eccentric habits, and of a most prodigious talent in quotation.

He was but fourteen when his father died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances.

Early retirement would severely curtail his pension, leav-ing his widow and the girl in straitened circumstances.

He was kind to her, however, to the end, and when the first baby girl was born and the young pair seemed to be in straitened circumstances, he made them an allowance until the day of his daughter's death, which occurred three years after her elopement, on the birth of her second child.