- 1
If someone is penurious, they have very, very little money — poor in a hard, empty way, not just ‘a bit short this month.’ It is a formal, rather adjective; you will meet it in writing more than in the street, where people say broke or hard up. Though actually the word works a second way, and this one is a little : a penurious person may have money but hate to spend it, holding the purse shut. So it can mean ‘very poor’ or ‘very mean with money.’ Both ideas sit near ‘not having enough to give.’ It is stronger than poor and much stiffer than broke.
赤貧的；也可指吝嗇、捨不得花錢
組成From Medieval Latin pēnūriōsus. Behind it is Latin penuria, ‘want, scarcity,’ related to paene, ‘scarcely’ (c. 1400). The ending -ous makes an adjective: ‘full of want.’ Compare French pénurie.
同家族的字
- penurythe noun from the same Latin penuria, ‘want’
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
penuriousadj/pəˈnjʊə.ɹi.əs/
- 1
Miserly; excessively cheap.
- The old man died a penurious wretch; eighty-thousand dollars in the mattress and as many holes in the roof.
- 2
Not bountiful; thin; scant.
- The penurious stew would have been more accurately labelled broth.
- 3
Impoverished; wanting for money.
- The poor penurious horde, naught in the cooking pot and naught in the belly.
- As the Swindon, Marlborough & Andover, conceived in 1872 and opened between the first two places in 1881 and to Andover and the L.S.W.R. in 1883, it was one of many small, ambitious and penurious Victorian lines, deeply concerned in the skulduggery characteristic of inter-railway dealings of that age and vexed by the G.W.R.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。