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Crossword clues for poor

poor
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
poor
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bad/poor investment
▪ The shares turned out to be a poor investment.
a bad/poor/disastrous start
▪ Things got off to a bad start when two people turned up late.
a poor appetite
▪ A poor appetite may be a sign of illness.
a poor background
▪ His poor background prevented him from going to medical college.
a poor education (=not very good)
▪ She had a poor education, and left school without qualifications.
a poor nation
▪ The high cost of medicines in poor nations prevents many citizens from receiving health care.
a poor reader (=someone who is not good at reading)
▪ All these students had been judged to be poor readers.
a poor sense of sth
▪ Owls and other predatory birds have a poor sense of smell.
a poor/disappointing season
▪ It's been a disappointing season for Arsenal.
a poor/wealthy district (=where a lot of people are poor/rich)
▪ He lived in one of London’s poorest districts.
a terrible/poor/rotten liar (=who does not tell believable lies)
▪ You're a rotten liar, Julia. What really happened?
bad/poor
▪ Moles have very poor eyesight.
bad/poor
▪ Poor hearing can affect your social relationships.
bad/poor
▪ The city doesn’t deserve its bad reputation.
bad/poor/terrible
▪ A student with a poor memory may struggle in school.
bad/poor/terrible/awful
▪ Why do doctors have such terrible handwriting?
be in good/poor health (=be healthy/unhealthy)
▪ Her parents were elderly and in poor health.
desperately poor/ill/tired etc
▪ He was desperately ill with a fever.
dirt poor
good/bad/poor sportsmanship (=good or bad behaviour in a sport)
▪ We try to teach the kids good sportsmanship.
good/poor prognosis
▪ Doctors said Blake’s long-term prognosis is good.
good/poor visibility
▪ The search for survivors was abandoned because of poor visibility.
good/poor/proper hygiene
▪ The Consumers’ Association blames poor hygiene standards.
low/poor self-esteem (=not much self-esteem)
low/poor
▪ The pay levels have resulted in low morale within the company.
low/poor
▪ The report says the standard of children’s diet in Britain is poor.
poor boy
poor communication
▪ There was poor communication between the air traffic controllers and the aircraft.
poor concentration
▪ The boy had behavioural problems and suffered from poor concentration.
poor conditions
▪ The refugees are living in camps in very poor conditions.
poor discipline (=not enough clear and firm rules)
▪ Problems tend to arise in families where there is poor discipline.
poor little thing (=used to show sympathy)
▪ The poor little thing had hurt its wing.
poor (old) soul (=used to show pity for someone)
▪ The poor old soul had fallen and broken her hip.
poor sanitation
▪ Overcrowding and poor sanitation are common problems in prisons.
poor sight
▪ His sight was quite poor.
poor sod
▪ The poor sod's wife left him.
poor
▪ He wanted to join the army but his health was too poor.
poor
▪ Why is his performance in school so poor?
poor (=not good for growing crops)
▪ It is poor land that should never have been farmed.
poor (=not good for growing plants)
▪ If the soil is poor, add manure or compost.
poor/bad (=with few crops)
▪ A series of poor harvests plunged them into debt.
poor/bad (=not bright enough)
▪ The light was too poor for me to read.
poor/defective
▪ Her vision was quite poor and she always wore glasses.
poor/good nutrition
▪ Poor nutrition can cause heart disease in later life.
poor/low
▪ The magazine is printed on low quality paper.
poor/unhealthy
▪ A poor diet affects your skin and hair condition.
positive/good/poor/negative self-image
▪ Depression affects people with a poor self-image.
strong/poor showing
▪ Women made a strong showing in the election.
the poor guy (=used when something bad happens to someone and you want to show sympathy)
▪ The poor guy was robbed of all his money.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ These days we have dealt very satisfactorily with the problem; we have made the rector as poor as the vicar!
▪ It was as poor here as anything he had experienced in the Borinage.
▪ The poll found 29 percent rated his performance as good, 42 percent as fair and 19 percent as poor.
▪ You are racist, as poor darling Donald was.
▪ We can treat lone parents as poor people, needing means-tested social assistance of some sort - as we do now.
▪ And Thomas Hudson, born as poor as herself and just as upward mobile, was gentility personified, sensibility made flesh.
desperately
▪ The unease is not restricted to the desperately poor, swampy country of 10m people.
▪ But the Valley remained desperately poor, with little possibility of economic expansion or improvement.
▪ Far from being desperately poor peasants, the squatters were clearly city dwellers.
▪ Children, the elderly, the desperately poor.
▪ The prices are still too high to allow more than a small number of people in desperately poor countries to be treated.
▪ It was that bust-up which ruined team morale this season and contributed to Lancashire's desperately poor season.
▪ He remained desperately poor and obstinately proud.
▪ Saint Antoine, south-eastern suburb of Paris, a desperately poor area in the eighteenth century, with many starving unemployed.
extremely
▪ For a very large female patient, or one who has extremely poor balance, a wraparound skirt may be more practical.
▪ The vehicles and major items of equipment of all sorts arrived in extremely poor condition.
▪ The rural areas contained 34 percent of poor families and 19 percent of extremely poor families.
▪ Unfortunately, the prospects for progress beyond an apparent willingness to agree to share responsibility for Hebron are extremely poor.
▪ If gamma shares are not liquid and tradeable, then pricing efficiency will be extremely poor.
▪ Despite all of the highfalutin gadgets, intelligence for the most part was extremely poor.
▪ Unfortunately, governments, aid agencies and the United Nations have an extremely poor record of being able to organise anything.
▪ Her memory is extremely poor and she can not sustain a normal conversation.
so
▪ Many people simply don't believe that Gen Pinochet's health is so poor.
▪ Among local community leaders there are differing opinions about why Tucson is so poor.
▪ Were they so poor that they couldn't afford to pay?
▪ I am certain that, in those days, the quality of food was so poor that eating was probably hazardous.
▪ Forest soils are so poor they can't support more than two or three seasons' crops.
▪ Around one third of pensioners are so poor that their basic state pension is topped up with other state benefits.
▪ But aid agencies report tens of thousands families so poor that they need help procuring flour, cooking oil and other basics.
▪ The light may be so poor that I can hardly see anything at all anyway.
too
▪ However, these were now too low and my prospects too poor for me to continue along that track.
▪ And the quality of many photographs in the 240-page paperback is too poor to be of any use.
▪ The Morans are too poor to afford cheap shoes.
▪ High-definition television, still getting off the ground, is sharper but still too poor for text.
▪ The family might be too poor to help, or not available due to death or emigration.
▪ Her boyfriend acknowledges the child, named Clifton, but comes from a family too poor to help out.
▪ The others, too poor in pocket or spirit, have children.
▪ For people who were too poor to leave home, it was the only path to higher education.
very
▪ Then there was a long drought which produced a very poor harvest.
▪ Since he him-self grew up very poor, he empathizes with other whites who are struggling economically.
▪ The outlook for this patient was very poor.
▪ The Agriculture Department said Monday the wheat crop in 19 states is in poor or very poor condition.
▪ She was starting at zero as she had very poor schooling due to ill health.
▪ It was a very poor neighborhood, old houses, unpaved streets.
▪ The merit of the project in relation to each criterion is assessed in terms of the five classes, ranging from very good to very poor.
▪ In the kitchen, the food continues to be cooked on a charcoal fire, the fuel of the very poor.
■ NOUN
boy
▪ I try to convince myself that it's conditioning, the poor boy and his fears of success.
▪ A third close friend, Ed Prince, learned early that poor boys whose fathers die young could not succeed at business.
▪ You can be the wealthiest man in Rio, or the poorest boy.
▪ David Copperfield about a poor boy who is mistreated by people that was very sad.
▪ He was a poor boy from Scarborough, who went to Manchester.
▪ The poor boys, innocent boys, the fragile flame of life snuffed out suddenly and so much candle left!
▪ The poor boy has been waiting, so patiently.
▪ The poor boy continued to fight with propriety in these fictions.
child
▪ The average shortfall of income beneath the poverty line for poor children has also fallen by 31.7 per cent.
▪ Y., all but accused Clinton of selling out poor children to help ensure his re-election.
▪ Schools with an intake of troubled poor children struggle in the league tables, lose children and lose money.
▪ When Rose was pregnant, Steve threatened to call the poor child after the book's narrator, Ishmael!
▪ But we still spend enough to provide Head Start to only a third of all poor children.
▪ In those days, poor children usually left school when they were thirteen.
▪ In 1877, she opened her first kindergarten for poor children, and eventually she supported thirty-one of them.
condition
▪ The one living at the hospital was found in a poor condition on the Aycliffe Industrial Estate.
▪ The Agriculture Department said Monday the wheat crop in 19 states is in poor or very poor condition.
▪ Use a heavy-duty solvent-based type instead if the roof surface is in very poor condition.
▪ The vehicles and major items of equipment of all sorts arrived in extremely poor condition.
▪ The long fast during the rut, together with fighting and mating, may leave the male in poor condition for the winter.
▪ Leaving behind low living standards and poor conditions in work and study seems more like rejection than adaptation.
▪ A police spokesman said the stolen car was in poor condition with a broken rear passenger window.
▪ Cattle were emaciated, under nourished and in poor condition.
country
▪ What started with high hopes for mutual support among poor countries was confounded by market forces.
▪ Today most of the women in poor countries work the land.
▪ The association lends money to the world's very poorest countries.
▪ Many experts doubt that capital and technology can be created fast enough in poor countries to keep up with the demand.
▪ In many poorer countries they long to send out workers, yet are frustrated through lack of resources.
▪ By these measures, the economic gap between the wealthier countries and the poorer countries is usually diminished.
▪ Many poor countries neglect their national parks.
▪ Campaigners argue that poor countries faced with a health emergency have a right under international trade legislation to buy generic drugs.
diet
▪ Factors such as stress and a poor diet can affect these hormone levels, worsening the symptoms.
▪ He said that three factors had caused my arteries to be blocked: heredity, poor diet, and lack of exercise.
▪ Eating and drinking: under-eating, over-eating, poor diet in general for whatever reason - choice, ignorance, poverty. 2.
▪ Or should they be blamed on inadequate medical care, poor diet or other environmental factors?
▪ They have a poor diet and look bad, and gradually care less and less about themselves and how others see them.
▪ So a poor diet can eventually have an effect on your hair condition.
▪ A poor diet, with low nutrient snacks can lead to nutritional deficiencies.
▪ All four are still suffering ill-health due to torture, poor diet and insanitary prison conditions.
family
▪ What actually happened was that a less doctrinaire magistracy put local taxes up in order to provide bread for poor families.
▪ As is to be expected, approximately 75 percent of the children come from poor families.
▪ The rural areas contained 34 percent of poor families and 19 percent of extremely poor families.
▪ Food be-came more accessible and convenient to all but the poorest families.
▪ The rural areas contained 34 percent of poor families and 19 percent of extremely poor families.
▪ Despite that, he believes the initiative will succeed in helping working poor families.
▪ Meanwhile, visiting relatives from Detroit or Rio will leave enough money to keep a poor family in food for months.
▪ The welfare plan still would end the basic guarantee of money to poor families.
girl
▪ When I congratulated the poor girl, she almost fainted.
▪ Terrified by the suffering of the poor girl, at the end of his patience and afraid, he abandons her.
▪ She was bored, poor girl.
▪ Some of the poor girls had a bad smell.
▪ The poor girl appeared to have had no idea.
▪ I have something here that might help you find the man who attacked the poor girl.
▪ My oldest daughter, poor girl, swelled up like an elephant.
health
▪ He began with his poor health.
▪ Both single people and unhappily married people report poorer health than peo-ple who are happily married or partnered.
▪ There is no doubt that many older people and their carers will look towards their doctors when illness and poor health intervene.
▪ Because of poor health, it was necessary for him to rest several hours a day in his study.
▪ Even during recent years of poor health, his outstanding qualities were riveting charm and mental vitality.
▪ No one should shoot up drugs because addiction, poor health, family disruption, emotional disturbances and death could follow.
▪ The monument, by Barzaghi, was completed when the writer was old and in poor health, as can been seen.
▪ Who could blame a wife, herself elderly and in poor health, for suggesting suicide to her terminally ill husband?
job
▪ But the government did a singularly poor job in getting its patient-centred message across.
▪ And really, what was the last poor job of lighting seen on Broadway?
▪ In the second, nervous disorders have no effect on absenteeism, despite the fact that they are caused by poor jobs.
▪ They understand what a poor job many public institutions do.
▪ Women participate in poorer jobs and in the tertiary sectors, areas which have suffered the most from peripheral capitalist development.
▪ He notes that employers identify problems stemming from inappropriate work attitudes or behaviors as the primary cause of poor job performance.
▪ Anya sits in the passenger seat, arms folded across her chest, making a pretty poor job of concealing her impatience.
▪ The poll found 27 percent of women voters think Wilson is doing a poor job, compared with 11 percent of men.
light
▪ Her tests for the relation between grammatical structure and context formation similarly show the unschooled Wolof children in a poor light.
▪ The poor light barely reached the chamber's four walls.
▪ The curtains in the flat were drawn, cutting down even the poor light that remained from outside.
▪ Then, having ensured that the match would finish so late, Moin complained about the poor light.
▪ Delgard paused at the top of the stairs, allowing his eyes to adjust to the poor light.
▪ Even if, in the poor light, you did see it, you would dismiss it.
▪ Should children attempt to read in poor light?
▪ He glanced at his watch, bringing it close to his face because of the poor light.
man
▪ The poor man was exhausted by the end of the performance and his cardigan looked like a sack!
▪ You are rich and I am a poor man.
▪ In the end I got another doctor to sedate the poor man.
▪ Fortunately, Herbert 92X had shot a good man, a poor man, a family man from the ghetto.
▪ The subscriptions promised on that evening of £13.2s.6d, from a group of largely poor men, were sacrificial.
▪ The poor man had placed a great deal of trust in Robert Schuyler.
▪ His heart - his other lung - both lungs - the poor man was having a haemorrhage.
▪ No captain on the east coast made his men more money, and they were all poor; all poor men.
people
▪ They penalise poor people such as my constituent.
▪ It must be noted that the vast majority of poor people in the United States are women and children.
▪ Cant about the free market creating opportunities for poor people is meaningless when wealth calls all the shots.
▪ He also has donated thousands of dollars to poor people in the town for help in paying medical bills.
▪ The effect would be worst on their small projects ... the kind which help poor people the most.
▪ There are many poor people in the world; that in itself is a great injustice.
▪ And it is the race factor, the stereotype that most poor people are black, that holds the entire image together.
performance
▪ But still these are all proximate causes of poor performance.
▪ Education researchers have traced her poorer performance all the way back to elementary school.
▪ Even when monitoring can be done effectively, disciplining employees for poor performance is itself costly.
▪ Participation in one set of activities was often used to explain poor performance in other activities.
▪ Tony Armstrong, director of corporate affairs at Northern Rock, defended the company's poor performance.
▪ The kind of symptoms; sluggish cars and poor performance.
▪ In addition it is difficult to attribute more errors or a poorer performance wholly to the effects of a body clock.
▪ Worse still, injuries are offered as excuses for poor performances.
quality
▪ After testing nine such cleaning firms, Which? magazine found many charged high rates for poor quality service.
▪ He had eaten in other rectories and had seen how deeply the poorer quality of meals could affect morale.
▪ Even the food in camp was of poor quality and there was little opportunity for relaxation.
▪ They can not risk using poor quality seed.
▪ You may be asked for a replacement photograph if the one you supply is of poor quality.
▪ Lunchtime drinking that leads to reduced or poor quality work in the afternoons is one example.
▪ Film left lying around the laboratory becomes dusty and scratched, and makes poor quality replicas.
▪ The alternative is a reinforcement of existing job segregation and a poor quality of future employment for both women and men.
relation
▪ Alternatively they may be subsumed within the department and treated as a poor relation.
▪ In the considered opinion of many experts this poor relation of the industry will probably take 80% of the market by volume.
▪ She moved in this atmosphere not quite as an equal, but not quite as a poor relation, either.
▪ I enquired about poor relations, in case anyone thought they had been done out of all this prosperity.
▪ Pauken, whose late-starting campaign caught people by surprise, has poor relations with Texas elected officials, particularly Gov.
▪ Build quality and sound are as good as I expected, so these guitars are definitely not poor relations.
▪ It was furnished with a certain meanness of equipment that made them feel like poor relations.
showing
▪ By comparison with this vitality, Chichester made a comparatively poor showing.
▪ In my view, the above-quoted explanations for the poor showing, although valid, are too superficial.
▪ The poor showing of school work experience is striking.
▪ But the alternative - to have him believing her poor showing had been caused by drugs, was equally untenable.
▪ For what a poor showing they had made, the four of them, that afternoon!
▪ I'd make a very poor showing in a court.
soul
▪ Indeed it is a testimony to the value of computers that these poor souls still continue the struggle with the machine.
▪ There seemed to be a cop for every fan, and only one poor soul tried to make it happen for himself.
▪ Sure, he wouldn't be killed for anything he had on him, the poor soul.
▪ Voters, poor souls, are likely to be confused.
▪ King Robert himself hardly counted, poor soul.
▪ She's just like Sarah, in Liverpool, and that poor soul Betty.
▪ My sister, she was an invalid, died last week, poor soul.
▪ Melody is a poor soul and I feel very sorry for her.
state
▪ It also emphasises the need for continuing professional development of science teachers and the poor state of labs and equipment.
▪ Arkansas is a poor state, its deficiencies no measure of its virtue.
▪ The monument itself was in a poor state of repair and suffering the effects of age.
▪ Wiggins is the largest town in Stone County, and one of the poorest regions of the poorest state in the country.
▪ So I cast around for somewhere else and we found this, in a very poor state of repair.
▪ The report he submitted to his superiors accurately reflected the poor state of Volunteer morale and the need for immediate corrective action.
▪ The main half-timbered building now forms part of a farm, and is in a poor state of repair.
▪ In general, the mill is in a poor state of repair.
thing
▪ The poor things shrivel up in protest.
▪ Getting lost in the part, Miss Bubble in the Tubble set new standards of bimbo excellence, poor thing.
▪ He had had to go out on exercise one night, and was on duty another, poor thing.
▪ Interracial couples were under surveillance wherever the poor things raised their heads anywhere in the city.
▪ Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things.
▪ Ah, she has been shot, poor thing.
▪ My pigeon can't fly, poor thing.
▪ The poor thing lives in Brooklyn.
woman
▪ The poor woman had given way to a black mood and been swamped by her ugly past, he explained.
▪ Convincing the powers-that-be to pay political heed to the needs of poor women and women of color was another.
▪ The poor woman had no choice but to return to her files.
▪ The poor woman had no faith in herself.
▪ She was only half alive, poor woman.
▪ But the harshest rhetoric and most sweeping policy changes have been reserved for the poor, particularly poor women.
▪ The poorer women especially had little choice but to follow their husbands and sweethearts into battle.
▪ The marketers' response to proletarianization also suggests that the political potential of poor women traders warrants greater attention.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bad/poor sport
▪ He told everyone Norm was a hothead, a poor sport, a disgrace as a Catholic, and a lousy catcher.
▪ It is not good for a player to be considered a poor sport.
a poor/rotten etc excuse for sth
▪ But Tories have continued to attack, saying the scheme is a poor excuse for real pedestrianisation.
give a good/poor account of yourself
▪ Cooper gave a good account of himself in the fight.
▪ Sussex's Wood gave a good account of herself and should have claimed the second set.
▪ Thirteen-year-old Patsy, who could always give a good account of herself, looked upset.
▪ Though it gave a good account of itself, Dave gently persuaded the fish close enough to be lifted aboard the boat.
good/bad/poor etc effort
▪ Batter Up Despite my best efforts, I could not stop eating the skinny fries that came with the combination.
▪ Dealing with these individual and family concerns will require the best efforts of mental health professionals.
▪ Football is a team game; offense and defense must work together to produce the best effort.
▪ However, objects decay despite our best efforts to conserve them.
▪ In spite of Holford-Walker's best efforts, the moran evaded his supervision.
▪ In spite of the rain's best efforts, I was pleased that I had been able to observe and film interesting mink behaviour.
▪ Or maybe they disapproved of or were indifferent to your best efforts.
▪ Peter Pike and Davern Lambert had good efforts before Musgrove completed his hat-trick with a good shot on the turn.
good/bad/poor etc seller
▪ Alcohol and western cigarettes are best sellers.
▪ Convinced it had a best seller on its hands, Random House came up with the unorthodox idea of relaunching the book.
▪ Drosnin is an investigative newspaper reporter who once wrote a best seller about Howard Hughes.
▪ His album Stars was last year's best seller and spawned a string of hit singles.
▪ It was the earliest best seller.
▪ Q.. What makes a book a best seller?
▪ The man who made a best seller out of a defamatory rant now wants to make a best seller out of repentance.
▪ Voice over Mrs De Winter is already tipped as being one of the best sellers this year.
good/bad/poor etc speller
▪ Only good spellers can spell easily orally.
▪ They give the good speller a chance to use his skill, but may depress a poor speller.
good/poor/silly old etc sb
good/top/poor etc performer
▪ Almost all the poor performers were to be found in the economically-disadvantaged regions.
▪ Both Cisco and Stratacom are among the top performers on Wall Street.
▪ But these top performers are aware of the requirements for effective training as well as its limitations.
▪ Deals are also being offered to companies as alternative incentive perks to top performers.
▪ He chose an all-or-nothing strategy to put himself in the top performers in the Great Grain Challenge.
▪ It took me seven months to really understand that I have an individual who is a good performer.
▪ Strasser pointed to the construction, cable, chemical, tire and engineering industries as the likely best performers this year.
▪ The poorer performers tend to die; the better ones, to reproduce.
in good/bad/poor etc shape
▪ But if I was in better shape, I'd be sitting up there.
▪ He could still be in good shape.
▪ He said Texpool is in good shape now.
▪ If only he could tell them he was all right, in good shape, considering ....
▪ This saw the band in good shape, retaining their traditions of twisted passions and bleak emotional narratives.
▪ This year, however, Dole appears in good shape in both locations.
▪ Uptown was still in bad shape.
▪ We found he was in good shape, but had no food in his intestines.
in good/poor etc repair
▪ Almost 40% of unfit properties, and 35% of properties in poor repair, were occupied by people aged 60 and over.
▪ Drains: A properly constructed system, in good repair, does not normally require cleaning.
▪ It was the only door on Dreadnought which could be considered in good repair.
▪ Or Arthur McAlister; who had taken the responsibility of having their lawn mowed and keeping the house in good repair.
▪ Specific buildings, notably those on Castle Hill, including the cathedral and palaces, are restored and in good repair.
▪ The fences on either side of the track were in poor repair and in April 1965 children were seen on the line.
▪ The gallery is a very fine example and in good repair.
▪ The power station was in poor repair, and Smith set about installing new insulators and restoring good practice.
poor/lucky/handsome etc devil
▪ And the poor devil can't hide a thing from her.
▪ Eliot has it perhaps worse than I have - poor devil.
▪ He loathed the sterile ritual of inspections, and this poor devil in his untimely end had saved him from that.
▪ He was a handsome devil, clever and presumably extremely well off.
▪ I know bow the poor devil feels.
▪ I was driving past and tried to stop this poor devil getting beaten up.
▪ This isn't a propitious start for him, poor devil.
▪ What on earth was eating the poor devil?
put up a good/poor etc show
▪ He might have put up a good show the other day, but that was because he was frightened.
▪ She put up a better show in the 1980s.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Poor baby. Come here and let me give you a cuddle.
▪ a poor math student
▪ a poor neighborhood
▪ Attendance at the meeting was poor.
▪ Elaine comes from a poor family.
▪ Her chances of recovery are poor.
▪ Her mother grew up dirt poor among migrant workers in Alabama.
▪ His memory is poor, so you may need to repeat things.
▪ I hear poor old Steve broke his ankle.
▪ Most herbs grow fairly well in dry, poor soil.
▪ People who live in poor countries have a much lower life expectancy.
▪ She was born in a poor district of Chicago in 1925.
▪ Some Democrats believed they lost the election because many poor women didn't turn out to vote.
▪ The poor girl gets blamed for everything that goes wrong.
▪ The land around here is poor because of years of intensive farming.
▪ The Scotts are so poor they can barely afford milk and bread.
▪ The soil is very poor in minerals and needs some fertilizer.
▪ These cuts will hit the poorest members of society.
▪ They were so poor they couldn't afford to buy shoes for their children.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ For the long term, today's crisis is obviously a poor guide.
▪ I often think of poor Mrs Carrow now.
▪ In fact poor people have more at stake in preserving the resources they depend on.
▪ Should children attempt to read in poor light?
▪ The poor, sick, bereaved, came knocking at the door.
▪ These examinations are probably a poor instrument for measuring the quality of medical education because they concentrate on factual retention.
▪ We budgeted an improvement to 1991's poor results in anticipation of a recovery in the economy which never materialised.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Poor

Poor \Poor\, a. [Compar. Poorer (?; 254); superl. Poorest.] [OE. poure or povre, OF. povre, F. pauvre, L. pauper; the first syllable of which is probably akin to paucus few (see Paucity, Few), and the second to parare to prepare, procure. See Few, and cf. Parade, Pauper, Poverty.]

  1. Destitute of property; wanting in material riches or goods; needy; indigent.

    Note: It is often synonymous with indigent and with necessitous denoting extreme want. It is also applied to persons who are not entirely destitute of property, but who are not rich; as, a poor man or woman; poor people.

  2. (Law) So completely destitute of property as to be entitled to maintenance from the public.

  3. Hence, in very various applications: Destitute of such qualities as are desirable, or might naturally be expected; as:

    1. Wanting in fat, plumpness, or fleshiness; lean; emaciated; meager; as, a poor horse, ox, dog, etc. ``Seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill-favored and lean-fleshed.''
      --Gen. xli. 19.

    2. Wanting in strength or vigor; feeble; dejected; as, poor health; poor spirits. ``His genius . . . poor and cowardly.''
      --Bacon.

    3. Of little value or worth; not good; inferior; shabby; mean; as, poor clothes; poor lodgings. ``A poor vessel.''
      --Clarendon.

    4. Destitute of fertility; exhausted; barren; sterile; -- said of land; as, poor soil.

    5. Destitute of beauty, fitness, or merit; as, a poor discourse; a poor picture.

    6. Without prosperous conditions or good results; unfavorable; unfortunate; unconformable; as, a poor business; the sick man had a poor night.

    7. Inadequate; insufficient; insignificant; as, a poor excuse.

      That I have wronged no man will be a poor plea or apology at the last day.
      --Calamy.

  4. Worthy of pity or sympathy; -- used also sometimes as a term of endearment, or as an expression of modesty, and sometimes as a word of contempt.

    And for mine own poor part, Look you, I'll go pray.
    --Shak.

    Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing.
    --Prior.

  5. Free from self-assertion; not proud or arrogant; meek. ``Blessed are the poor in spirit.''
    --Matt. v. 3.

    Poor law, a law providing for, or regulating, the relief or support of the poor.

    Poor man's treacle (Bot.), garlic; -- so called because it was thought to be an antidote to animal poison. [Eng]
    --Dr. Prior.

    Poor man's weatherglass (Bot.), the red-flowered pimpernel ( Anagallis arvensis), which opens its blossoms only in fair weather.

    Poor rate, an assessment or tax, as in an English parish, for the relief or support of the poor.

    Poor soldier (Zo["o]l.), the friar bird.

    The poor, those who are destitute of property; the indigent; the needy. In a legal sense, those who depend on charity or maintenance by the public. ``I have observed the more public provisions are made for the poor, the less they provide for themselves.''
    --Franklin.

Poor

Poor \Poor\, n. (Zo["o]l.) A small European codfish ( Gadus minutus); -- called also power cod.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
poor

c.1200, "lacking money or resources, destitute; needy, indigent; small, scanty," from Old French povre "poor, wretched, dispossessed; inadequate; weak, thin" (Modern French pauvre), from Latin pauper "poor, not wealthy," from pre-Latin *pau-paros "producing little; getting little," a compound from the roots of paucus "little" (see paucity) and parare "to produce, bring forth" (see pare).\n

\nReplaced Old English earm. Figuratively from early 14c. Meaning "of inferior quality" is from c.1300. Of inhabited places from c.1300; of soil, etc., from late 14c. The poor boy sandwich, made of simple but filling ingredients, was invented and named in New Orleans in 1921. To poor mouth "deny one's advantages" is from 1965 (to make a poor mouth "whine" is Scottish dialect from 1822). Slang poor man's ________ "the cheaper alternative to _______," is from 1854.

poor

"poor persons collectively," mid-12c., from poor (adj.). The Latin adjective pauper "poor" also was used in a noun sense "a poor man."

Wiktionary
poor

a. 1 With little or no possessions or money. 2 Of low quality. n. (qualifier: with "the") Those who have little or no possessions or money, taken as a group.

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WordNet
poor

  1. adj. moderate to inferior in quality; "they improved the quality from mediocre to above average"; "he would make a poor spy" [syn: mediocre, second-rate]

  2. deserving or inciting pity; "a hapless victim"; "miserable victims of war"; "the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic"- Galsworthy; "piteous appeals for help"; "pitiable homeless children"; "a pitiful fate"; "Oh, you poor thing"; "his poor distorted limbs"; "a wretched life" [syn: hapless, miserable, misfortunate, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, wretched]

  3. having little money or few possessions; "deplored the gap between rich and poor countries"; "the proverbial poor artist living in a garret" [ant: rich]

  4. characterized by or indicating lack of money; "the country had a poor economy" [ant: rich]

  5. low in degree; "expectations were poor"

  6. badly supplied with desirable qualities or substances; "a poor land"; "the area was poor in timber and coal"; "food poor in nutritive value" [ant: rich]

  7. not sufficient to meet a need; "an inadequate income"; "a poor salary"; "money is short"; "on short rations"; "food is in short supply"; "short on experience" [syn: inadequate, short]

  8. unsatisfactory; "a poor light for reading"; "poor morale"

  9. yielding little by great labor; "a hardscrabble farm"; "poor soil" [syn: hardscrabble]

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Wikipedia
Poor

Poor is an adjective related to a state of poverty, low quality or pity.

Poor may also refer to:

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "poor".

Rykor found it aberrational that the Emperor could believe that poverty could be cured by putting the poor in uniforms.

CHAPTER XLIX LAETITIA AND SIR WILLOUGHBY We cannot be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the frailties of our poor human constitution.

It was terrible in the nineteen thirties, the Depression was on and people were so poor, especially Aboriginal people.

I used to feel so sorry for these Aboriginal people, I wondered how they could come to be so poor.

The hardier swimmers, with Paul, struck out for the abutment on the pier in their usual way and poor Michael was left alone.

New Orleans, simply clothed in homespun cotton striped red and blue, abysmally poor and surrounded by swarms of children who all seemed to bear names like Nono and Vev6 and Bibi, cheerfully selling powdered file and alligator hides and going away again without bothering, like the Americans did, to sample the delights of the big city.

You will dishonour me by accepting such a poor offer, and you will do yourself harm too, as you will not be able to ask for a good salary after taking such a small one.

While he was reasoning with himself, whether he should acquaint these poor people with his suspicion, the maid of the house informed him that a gentlewoman desired to speak with him.

As for boasting of our past, the laudator temporis acti makes but a poor figure in our time.

A sound like poor dead Acton might make, watching his own remains rotting out there on the rift?

I declined to be present at his suppers, which were far from amusing, and gave the family of the actress an opportunity of laughing at the poor fool who was paying for them.

There are cases where it is advisable, in states too poor or niggardly to care adequately for their defectives and delinquents, but eugenists should favor segregation as the main policy, with sterilization for the special cases as previously indicated.

He had the advantage of owning an excellent network of reporters of transgressions, for he enlisted Lucius Decumius and his crossroads brethren as informers, and cracked down very hard on merchants who weighed light or measured short, on builders who infringed boundaries or used poor materials, on landlords who had cheated the water companies by inserting bigger-bore adjutage pipes from the mains into their properties than the law prescribed.

And let no one laugh at this poor adolescent who comes up with advice on matrimonial matters in which obviously he cannot be an expert.

If you scorn the maid at your window I will aerogram my immediate acceptance of a proposal of marriage that has been made to your poor Ada a month ago in Valentine State.