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Penury is the noun: the state of having almost nothing. It is not ordinary tightness with money. It is deep, grinding lack, the kind that makes life small and hard. Newspapers and novelists use it; in ordinary talk people usually say poverty or being broke. You can stretch it a little in careful writing — a penury of ideas is a sad lack of ideas, not of cash — but the home meaning is still extreme poverty. It feels formal and a little old; it is a heavy word, and people reach for it when they want you to feel the emptiness, not just tick a box that says ‘poor.’
赤貧、一貧如洗（很文的說法）
組成From Late Middle English penuri, penurie, borrowed from Latin pēnūria (‘need, scarcity, want’) plus the old noun ending -y. Further back the trail is uncertain; it is possibly related to Latin paene, ‘almost, scarcely.’
同家族的字
- penuriousthe adjective from the same Latin root
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。
penurynoun/ˈpɛnjʊɹi/
- 1
Extreme need or want; destitution, poverty; (countable) an instance of this.
- As he [Jesus] behelde⸝ he ſawe the ryche men⸝ howe they caſt in their offeringꝭ [offeringis] into the treſury. He ſawe alſo a certayne povre widdowe⸝ which caſt ĩ [in] thydre two mytes. And he ſaid: of a trueth I ſaye vnto you⸝ this povre widdowe hath putt in moare thẽ [then, i.e., than] they all. For they all have of their ſuperfluyte added vnto the offeringe off God: But ſhe⸝ of her penury⸝ hath caſt in all the ſubſtaunce that ſhe hadde.
- [W]hat prodigall portion haue I ſpent, that I ſhould come to ſuch penury?
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Often followed by of: a lack of something; a dearth, a scarcity.
- VVith theſe and many others as conſiderable, vvhich partly vvillingly, and partly in the penury of Books, forgettingly I paſſe, […]
- In early youth I laboured under a peculiar embarrassment and penury of words, which I sought to convey my thoughts adequately upon interesting subjects: […]
- 3
obsoleteThe quality of being miserly; miserliness, parsimoniousness, stinginess.
- God ſometimes puniſhes one ſinne vvith another; pride vvith adultery, drunkenneſſe vvith murder, careleſeneſſe vvith irreligion, idleneſſe vvith vanity, penury vvith oppreſſion, irreligion vvith blaſphemy, and that vvith Atheiſme, and therefore it is no vvonder if he puniſhes a ſinner by a ſinner.
- Let them not ſtill be obſtinately blind, / Still to divert the Good thou haſt deſign'd, / Or vvith Malignant penury, / To ſterve the Royal Vertues of his Mind.
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。