Immiserate

Word of the Day

Immiserate is a verb that means to cause to become poor or impoverished.

The word ‘miser’ today refers to someone who hoards money, but its Latin roots are in a word that means ‘wretched.’ This is where words like misery and miserable come from. It’s also the source of our word of the day. To immiserate someone is to make them miserable or unhappy, usually in fiscal terms, for example:

As much as I loved owning that ranch, it began to immiserate our family after a while. We simply couldn’t afford to feed ourselves anymore with all those horses to take care of.