Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To make miserable; impoverish.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To impoverish or sink into misery.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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This is how the "Third" World is kept in poverty, subjugated to the "First" World, whose people purposefully, premeditatedly impoverish and immiserate the people of the "Third" World via depraved indifference in order to serve the plump, plutocratic pleasure of U.S. transnationals, their shareholders and American consumers.
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All these carbon trading scams will accomplish is to further immiserate and disempower the Global South to extend our party a few hours, and we'll never see -- until it is too late -- the actualization of all that ocean of latent fury outside the 'burbs.
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If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it civilization, and probably the planet collapses.
The New Beginning papabear 2008
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If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it civilization, and probably the planet collapses.
Archive 2008-10-19 papabear 2008
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Some of the money comes from an army of dupes and dittoheads who don't mind being bilked to support a system whose ultimate purpose is to immiserate them, and the rest comes from people who are planning to immiserate them.
Wingnut welfare and pearl clutching: a match made in heaven. CC 2008
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If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses.
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April 17th, 2006 at 12:21 am cdj #75: I go with the founding fathers on this: the mass of humanity can be manipulated towards evil, and to act in ways contrary to morality, and even act against its own self interest, even in ways to enslave and immiserate itself.
Firedoglake » Late Nite FDL: Dear Wolfie: Can You Tell the Difference Yet? 2006
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People who dared to question the need to kill and immiserate as many Muslims as possible were at best ignored and at worst visited by the FBI.
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He is in the process of implementing a serious austerity package against Italian workers, which, if he gets away with it, will immiserate millions.
Progressive Bloggers 2010
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Or it might have been a bad idea to destabilize an entire country or to immiserate an entire population.
One Thousand Reasons 2009
epeolatrist commented on the word immiserate
(v) to impoverish or sink into misery
January 26, 2009