Definition of "poor"
poor
adjective
comparative poorer, superlative poorest
Quotations
He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.
1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Meanwhile, due to a lack of wind, air quality in west Taiwan was poor yesterday, the Environmental Protection Administration said. Air quality could deteriorate early this morning, triggering a “red” alert — which signals unhealthy air quality — in some parts of Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties, it said.
2021 March 28, “Taiwan News Quick Take”, in Taipei Times, archived from the original on 27 March 2021, Taiwan News, page 3
(attributive only) Worthy of pity.
Quotations
Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], page 0056
Quotations
noun
plural only
(plural only) The poor people of a society or the world collectively, the poor class of a society.
Quotations
...when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might haue bin sold for much, and giuen to the poore. When Iesus vnderstood it, he said vnto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good worke vpon me. For ye haue the poore alwayes with you, but me ye haue not alwayes.
1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Matthew 26:8-11
Harry Truman used to say that 13 or 14 million Americans had their interests represented in Washington, but that the rest of the people had to depend on the President of the United States. That is how I felt about the 35 million American poor. They had no voice and no champion. Whatever the cost, I was determined to represent them. Through me they would have an advocate and, I believed, new hope.
1971, Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, page 39
Then there have not always been proletarians?No. There have always been poor and working classes; and those who worked were almost always the poor. But there have not always been proletarians, just as competition has not always been free.
1972, Anonymous translation of Friedrich Engels as "Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith", International Publishers
This is the same Randian bullshit that we've been hearing from people like Brooks for ages and its entire premise is really revolting and insulting—this idea that the way society works is that the productive "rich" feed the needy "poor," and that any attempt by the latter to punish the former for "excesses" might inspire Atlas to Shrug his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve. That's basically Brooks's entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of "excesses"—but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat.
2010 Jan. 27, Matt Taibbi, "Populism: Just Like Racism!", True/Slant
noun
plural poors
verb
third-person singular simple present poors, present participle pooring, simple past and past participle poored