Adjective

(en adjective)

Poor; destitute; in need.

* 1830 , Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia , Thomas Ritchie (1830), page 422:

Many of the indigent children are so badly provided for by their parents, with both food and raiment, that they cannot attend school regularly;

* 1974 , Guy Davenport, Tatlin! :

I had since my introduction to the prince been sensitive to the fact that he must think an obviously indigent soldier of fortune will sooner or later open the subject of a subscription to the Greek Cause.

* 2011 , Carla Ulbrich, How Can You Not Laugh at a Time Like This?: Reclaim Your Health With Humor, Creativity, and Grit , Tell Me Press (2011), ISBN 9780981645346, page 65:

Because of this, when my second major health fiasco happened, I had no insurance, so I went to a teaching hospital where they took indigent patients.

* 2013 , Larry J. Siegel & John L. Worral, Essentials of Criminal Justice , Wadsworth (2013), ISBN 9781111835569, page 162:

In numerous Supreme Court decisions since Gideon v. Wainwright , the states have been required to provide counsel for indigent defendants at virtually all other stages of the criminal process, beginning with arrest and concluding with the defendant's release from the system.

Adjective

(er)

With little or no possessions or money.

:

Of low quality.

:

*, chapter=10

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.}}

To be pitied.

:

*

*:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=15 citation , passage=Mr. Campion sighed. ‘Poor man,’ he said. ‘He sees his great sacrifices rejected by the gods, and so, no doubt, all the Misses Eumenides let loose again to plague him.’}}

Deficient in a specified way.

:

Inadequate, insufficient.

:

*(w) (1600-1666)

*:That I have wronged no man will be a poor plea or apology at the last day.

Free from self-assertion; not proud or arrogant; meek.

*(Bible), (w) v.3

*:Blessed are the poor in spirit.