DESTITUTE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Destitute

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˈɛstətˌut/ Listen

adjective

Destitute adj.

Forsaken; not having in possession (something necessary, or desirable); deficient; lacking; devoid; often followed by of. "In thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute." "Totally destitute of all shadow of influence."

Not possessing the necessaries of life; in a condition of want; needy; without possessions or resources; very poor. "They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented."

verb

Destitute v. t.

To leave destitute; to forsake; to abandon. (Obs.) "To forsake or destitute a plantation."

To make destitute; to cause to be in want; to deprive; followed by of. (Obs.) "Destituted of all honor and livings."

To disappoint. (Obs.) "When his expectation is destituted."

See images of 'Destitute'

Etymology of 'Destitute'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Destitute" Quotes from Famous Books

... glutted with my grief— This flood of grief by evil winds distressed; My heart hath fled me like a bird on wings, And like the dove I moan. Tears from mine eyes Are falling as the rain from heaven falls, And I am destitute and full of woe. ...

— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... complaint was made by those who at that time were interested in the circulation of the King's silver that the people hoarded it up, and once they got possession of it the public were never allowed to see it again. The houses were small and destitute of many of the furnishings their descendants now think indispensable, but perhaps they enjoyed life quite as well ...

— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... in fresh—never draws but he gets a full hand—and he scoops the deck. He has too much luck for a white man." The remark was one that, said by Ray himself in his whimsical and downright manner, was destitute of any hidden meaning, and Billings, who had not seen Ray for years, would never have misunderstood it, but when he first heard it six months afterwards, and while Ray and himself had yet to meet, it was told semi-confidentially, told as Ray never said it, told in fact—by Gleason; and ...

— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... her mother met Linda's appeal; Louisa stood there with two letters, sealed and addressed, in her hand. She greeted me gaily and then asked her daughter if she were possessed of postage-stamps. Linda consulted a well-worn little pocket-book and confessed herself destitute; whereupon her mother gave her the letters with the request that she would go into the hotel, buy the proper stamps at the office, carefully affix them and put the letters into the box. She was to pay for the stamps, not have them put ...

— Louisa Pallant • Henry James

... killed and eaten. How shall we account for the universality of the practice over so vast an area, among people of such varying civilisation, and, with whatever intermixture, of such different blood? What circumstance is common to them all, but that they lived on islands destitute, or very nearly so, of animal food? I can never find it in my appetite that man was meant to live on vegetables only. When our stores ran low among the islands, I grew to weary for the recurrent day when ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

More quotes...