Destitution meaning

Noun: destitution

Pronunciation: (des-ti’t(y)oo-shun)

Destitution meaning: A state without friends, money or prospects. Extreme poverty or state of being destitute.

Synonyms: penury, indigence, need, pauperism, parsimonious, impoverishment, penniless

Derived forms: destitutions

Quotations: Mother Teresa – All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God.

Jean Baudrillard – Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other’s food.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca – That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.

Bertrand Russell – I cannot be content with a brief moment of riotous living followed by destitution, and however clever the scientists may be, there are some things that they cannot be expected to achieve.

Margaret Sanger – Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents to breed out of the race the scourges of transmissible disease, mental defect, poverty, lawlessness, crime since these classes would be decreasing in number instead of breeding like weeds such a plan would reduce the birth-rate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry.

Sample sentences:

1. He laid his case of destitution before her in a very moving letter.
2. Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
3. Everyone is more or less at the same level of shared destitution.
4. The survival of small islands of prosperity surrounded by seas of destitution is not viable.
5. Successive seasons of drought in the worst affected areas have now eroded many households’ assets to the point of destitution. A range of appropriate emergency interventions need to be put in place as quickly as possible before the already alarming conditions become much worse.
6. You who are taking this responsibility must show unprecedented courage and leadership. You must place the interests of your people first above all other concerns only then will this process, this attempt to break cycle of misery and destitution conflict and violence stand a chance of success.
7. Our mothers and fathers want change. They worked all of their lives, but today live in destitution.
8. It has now come to this that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.
9. Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg, salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworthy suffers an intestinal pang of strange complexity and raises the song.
10. The humanitarian emergency insurance contract might, in the future, offer us a way of insuring against these massive losses before they spell destitution for millions of families.