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Poverty; indigence. [Obs.] Eikon Basilike.

To bring to poverty; to impoverish; to ruin, as in reputation, morals, hopes, or the like; as, many are undone by unavoidable losses, but more undo themselves by vices and dissipation, or by indolence. That quaffing and drinking will undo you, Shak.

. This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. Macaulay.

state, business, or profession. What can be urged for them who not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness make themselves ridiculous Dryden.

ct, service, or condition; a devotion of one's possessions; as, a baptismal vow; a vow of poverty. "Nothing . . . that may . . . stain my vow of Nazarite." Milton. I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow. 2 Sam. xv. 7. I am combined by a sacred vow. Shak.

Specifically, absence or lack of necessaries; destitution; poverty; penury; indigence; need. Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want. Swift.

aucer. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom shrunk. Shak. The year before he had so used the matter that what by force, what by policy, he had taken from the Christians above thirty small castles. Knolles.

Of set purpose; self-determined; voluntary; as, willful murder. Foxe. In willful poverty chose to lead his life. Chaucer. Thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who, for my willful crime, art banished hence. Milton.

- Tiger wolf (Zoöl.), the spotted hyena. -- To keep the wolf from the door, to keep away poverty; to prevent starvation. See Wolf, 3, above. Tennyson. -- Wolf dog. (Zoöl.) (a) The mastiff, or shepherd dog, of the Pyrenees, supposed by some authors to be one of the ancestors of the St. Bernard dog. (b) The Irish greyh…