pauper

Learned borrowing from Latin pauper (“poor”). Originally a legal term.^[1] Doublet of poor.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɔː.pə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpɔ.pɚ/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑ.pɚ/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

  • Homophone: popper (cot–caught merger)
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈpoː.pə/
• Rhymes: -ɔːpə(ɹ)

pauper (plural paupers)

1. One who is extremely poor.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:pauper

   • 1991, Art Spiegelman, Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, New York: Pantheon Books, page 132:

     He has hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, and he lives like a pauper!

2. One living on or eligible for public charity.

pauper (third-person singular simple present paupers, present participle paupering, simple past and past participle paupered)

1. (transitive) To make a pauper of; to drive into poverty.
   • 2017, Naomi Rawlings, Love's Christmas Hope‎^[2], →ISBN, page 86:

     “There’s no sense in you paupering yourself because you’re too stubborn to take my money.” ¶ “I’m not paupering myself.”

• in forma pauperis

• Pauperism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Poverty threshold on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Measuring poverty on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• poper

Learned borrowing from Latin pauper.

pauper

1. poor

Borrowed from Latin pauper.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɑu̯.pər/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑu̯pər
• Hyphenation: pau‧per

pauper m (plural paupers, diminutive paupertje n)

1. (informal, often derogatory) pauper (one who is extremely poor)

• Matthias de Vries; Lambert Allard te Winkel (1864), “pauper”, in Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, published 2001
• “pauper” in Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal – Officiële Spelling, Nederlandse Taalunie. [the official spelling word list for the Dutch language]
• van der Sijs, Nicoline, editor (2010), “pauper”, in Etymologiebank, Meertens Institute

• pauperus (Late Latin)

Inherited from Proto-Italic *pawoparos (a thematic adjective, which was switched to the third declension in Latin analogically), from a compound beginning with Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, small”) (compare English few). The origin of the second element, -per, is less certain, but probably *perh₃- (“to grant, bestow, provide”) (compare Ancient Greek ἔπορον (époron, “to supply, grant, pay”)), therefore the compound meant “providing little”.^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈpau̯.pɛr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈpaːu̯.per]

pauper (genitive pauperis, comparative pauperior, superlative pauperrimus); third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem)

1. poor

   Synonyms: egens, inops, exiguus

   Antonyms: opulentus, dives, dis, ditis, opulens, locuples, pecuniosus

   • c. 4 BCE – 65 CE, Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 1.2.6:

     Illa vērō nōn est paupertās, sī laeta est; nōn quī parum habet, sed quī plūs cupit, pauper est.

     [Seneca has just quoted Epicurus regarding “cheerful” poverty:] But truly, it is not poverty if it is cheerful; it is not the one who has little, but the one who craves more, who is poor.

Third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem).

• In Late or Vulgar Latin, this third declension adjective seems to have been regularized to first/second declension, like in the attested forms pauperus and paupera.

• pauperculus
• pauperiēs
• paupertās

• paucus

• “pauper”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “pauper”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “pauper”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[3], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to raise a man from poverty to wealth: aliquem ex paupere divitem facere
    

pauper

1. alternative form of paper

• paper (Przemyśl, Western Lublin, Kurów)

Learned borrowing from Latin pauper.^[1][2][3][4] First attested in 1699.^[5]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -awpɛr
• Syllabification: pau‧per

pauper m pers

1. (archaic) pauper (poor person)

   Synonym: biedak

2. (archaic, figuratively) pauper (person in a difficult situation)

   Synonym: biedak

3. (historical, Middle Ages) pauper (poor student who lives off services or alms)
4. (obsolete, humorous) urchin, guttersnipe, mudlark (mischievous boy)

   Synonyms: ulicznik; see also Thesaurus:urwis

• pauper in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII i XVIII Wieku [Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the XVII and XVIII Century], (Can we date this quote?)
• Aleksander Zdanowicz (1861), “pauper”, in Słownik języka polskiego, Wilno 1861, volume II, page 979
• A. Kryński, W. Niedźwiedzki, editors (1908), “pauper”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), volume 4, Warsaw, page 93
• “pauper”, in Słownik gramatyczny języka polskiego [Grammatical Dictionary of Polish], 2022

Borrowed from Latin pauper.

pauper m or n (feminine singular pauperă, masculine plural pauperi, feminine/neuter plural paupere)

1. poor