impoverish
verbVerb Forms
| present simple I / you / we / they impoverish | |
| he / she / it impoverishes | |
| past simple impoverished | |
| past participle impoverished | |
| -ing form impoverishing |
- impoverish somebody
to make somebody poor 使贫穷 - impoverish something
to make something worse in quality 使贫瘠；使枯竭
Word Originlate Middle English (formerly also as empoverish): from Old French empoveriss-, lengthened stem of empoverir, based on povre ‘poor’.