• Today's Word

Impecunious

🔊 Listen to the word Impecunious

im-pih-KYOO-nee-us

Definition

(adjective) Having little or no money; chronically poor

Example

Despite his impecunious circumstances, he maintained an air of dignity that made it impossible to pity him.

Word Origin

Impecunious derives from the Latin im- (“not”) + pecuniosus (“wealthy”), itself from pecunia (“money”), which traces back to pecus (“cattle”) — reflecting the ancient Roman practice of using livestock as a measure of wealth. It entered English in the late 16th century as a more refined, literary alternative to simply saying “broke.”

Fun Fact

The word’s root pecus — meaning cattle — reveals just how central livestock was to early economies. The same root gives us pecuniary (relating to money) and even connects to the word fee, which traces back through Germanic languages to a similar livestock-as-currency concept. For centuries, impecunious was the preferred term in literature for genteel poverty — the kind suffered by struggling artists, unlucky aristocrats, and idealistic young scholars who were too proud to admit how little they had.