Search the Dictionary

A poor person; especially, one development on private or public charity. Also used adjectively; as, pouper immigrants, pouper labor.

The state of being a pauper; the state of indigent persons requiring support from the community. Whatly.

The act or process of reducing to pauperism. C. Kingsley.

To reduce to pauperism; as, to pauperize the peasantry.

To make poor; to impoverish. Liming does not depauperate; the ground will last long, and bear large grain. Mortimer. Humility of mind which depauperates the spirit. Jer. Taylor.

To free from paupers; to rescue from poverty. [R.]

To deprive of the claim of a pauper to public support; to deprive of the privilege of suing in forma pauperis.

To free a state of pauperism, or from paupers. J. S. Mill.

One of a class of paupers or pensioners, or licensed beggars, in Scotland, to whim annually on the king's birthday were distributed certain alms, including a blue gown; a beadsman.

Dugdale as an example of the inheritance of criminal and immoral tendencies, disease, and pauperism. Sixty per cent of those traced showed, degeneracy, and they are estimated to have cost society $1,308,000 in 75 years.

One to be attended; specif., a pauper child intrusted to the care of a private person. [Eng.] Dickens.

A dwelling for a number of paupers maintained at public expense; an almshouse; a workhouse.

lay. See under Clay. -- Potter's field, a public burial place, especially in a city, for paupers, unknown persons, and criminals; -- so named from the field south of Jerusalem, mentioned in Matt. xxvii. 7. -- Potter's ore. See Alquifou. -- Potter's wheel, a horizontal revolving disk on which the clay is molded into…

shment of a person in a particular parish or town, which entitles him to maintenance if a pauper, and subjects the parish or town to his support. Blackstone. Bouvier. Act of settlement (Eng. Hist.), the statute of 12 and 13 William III, by which the crown was limited to the present reigning house (the house of Hanover)…

A kind of thin, weak broth or oatmeal porridge, served out to prisoners and paupers in England; also, a drink made of oatmeal, sugar, and water, sometimes used in the English navy or army. [Written also skilligolee, skillygalee, etc.]

tery for the reception and entertainment of strangers and pilgrims, and for the relief of paupers. [Called also Xenodocheion.]