Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To reduce to poverty; make poor.
  • transitive verb To deprive of richness or strength.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make poor; reduce to poverty or indigence.
  • To make poor in quality or character; reduce in vigor, capacity, productiveness, etc.; cause to deteriorate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make poor; to reduce to poverty or indigence.
  • transitive verb To exhaust the strength, richness, or fertility of; to make sterile.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive Make poor.
  • verb transitive Weaken in quality; deprive of some strength or richness.
  • verb intransitive Become poor.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb take away
  • verb make poor

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English empoverishen, from Old French empovrir, empovriss- : en-, causative pref.; see en– + povre, poor (from Latin pauper; see pauper).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French empoverir (modern French appauvrir), from em- + povre, from Latin pauper ("poor") (English poor).

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