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Impecunious   Listen
Impecunious

adjective
1.
Not having enough money to pay for necessities.  Synonyms: hard up, in straitened circumstances, penniless, penurious, pinched.



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"Impecunious" Quotes from Famous Books



... as a very long-headed proceeding," I remarked, with the impartial wisdom of the impecunious, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... with diamonds and self-satisfaction. But he was unmistakably one of our people. It was like coming across a human being in the jungle. Moreover, his very diamonds somehow told a tale of former want, of a time when he had landed, an impecunious immigrant like myself; and this made him a living ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... as she remembered Sir Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of man, still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By way of relaxation he helped ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... In the Labour movement Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy, impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time have claimed the services of many gifted ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... he called, and resumed his seat as a lady entered—a stranger to him. At first glance he guessed she might be the wife of some impecunious musician, come to plead for restitution of an instrument. Such things happened now and again on Monday mornings; nor was the mistake without excuse in Miss Sally's attire. When travelling without her ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... The London Company, thrice chartered to take over to itself the land and resources of Virginia and populate its zone of rule, was endowed with sweeping rights and privileges which made it an absolute monopoly. The impecunious noblemen or gentlemen who transported themselves to Virginia to recoup their dissipated fortunes or seek adventure, encountered no trouble in getting large grants of land especially when after 1614 tobacco became a fashionable article in England ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... forerunner of modern musical comedy, where the grouchy millionaire papa is propitiated at the last moment (perhaps by the pleadings of the handsome widow), and similarly consents to his daughter's marriage with the handsome, if impecunious, ensign. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... agitation of the Paris Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on hearing the word "delicacy"; the "bold, bad men, the haunters of Social Science Congresses," who declaim "a sweet union of philosophy and poetry" from Wordsworth on the duty of the State towards education; the impecunious author "commercing with the stars" in Grub Street, reading "the Star for wisdom and charity, the Telegraph for taste and style," and looking for the letter from the Literary Fund, "enclosing half-a-crown, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... and in a far more material way. This was, perhaps, poetical justice, but I did not grudge it, since it was evident that Molly no longer cherished the intention of dangling her friend the heiress before me like a brilliant fly over the nose of an impecunious trout. On the contrary, she warned me off the premises. We were to hurry down to Monte Carlo as quickly as possible, that the situation might not be overstrained. Mercedes in the tonneau, I in the front seat, were to live and let live during ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... so bright, so well-nigh impossible of fulfillment, which as a young man fresh from college he had cherished. While young, he met and loved the girl he married. That she had visions he perfectly believed. That her visions were unworthy no power then could have made him believe. She came from an impecunious family whose lineage was older and greater than his. How she could have thought the high-browed, sensitive-faced young man the one who could fulfill her grasping desires is not to be fathomed. She had believed ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... farther ahead than did the men who engineered them. In his mind's eye he saw Honolulu a modern, electric-lighted city at a time when it straggled, unkempt and sand-tormented, over a barren reef of uplifted coral rock. So he bought land. He bought land from merchants who needed ready cash, from impecunious natives, from riotous traders' sons, from widows and orphans and the lepers deported to Molokai; and, somehow, as the years went by, the pieces of land he had bought proved to be needed for warehouses, or coffee buildings, or hotels. He leased, ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... thought fit to rank as backing for their notes. In other words, the note-issuing business would once more have to be regulated on banking principles and controlled by the price asked, for advances, instead of expressing the helplessness and improvidence of an impecunious and invertebrate Government. In this manner the new departure might be a convenient halfway-house on the way from chaos back to sanity. But probably it is too revolutionary and goes too straight in the teeth of the Bank of England's privilege to receive much practical consideration; and ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... impecunious young man, and, the other day, on seeing this Advertisement in the Times, I was seized with a wild desire to "at once secure above reward." Said I to myself, "I have 'wealthy and influential friends.' There is my cousin's uncle, who has, I believe, thirty thousand ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... note by note. She was studying music, and her mother, who was the Archduchess, was watching her. But now and then, when her mother's eyes were glued to the stage, Hilda stole a glance at the upper balconies where impecunious young officers leaned over the rail and gazed at ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... though dressed in rags, is ever pleasing to me." There was plenty of wit dressed in rags drifting about the London of that day. Men of genius slept on bulkheads and beneath arches, and starved for want of a guinea, or haunted low taverns, or paced St. James's Square all night in impecunious couples for sheer need of a lodging, cheering each other's supperless mood with political conversations and declarations that, let come what might come, they would never desert the Ministry. But Goldsmith ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... nobody, giving long dinner-parties to other rich nobodies, living amongst City men, retired trades-people; envied only by their fat, vulgarly dressed wives, courted by seedy Bohemians for the sake of my cook; with perhaps an opera singer or an impecunious nobleman or two out of Dad's City list for my show-guests. Is that the court, Paul, where you would ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... street breaks out into an eruption of automobile stores, found herself suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate glass. On the other side of this glass, at marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by. It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the center of the window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... been put in his proper place, and that a lesson so necessary has not really been so dearly purchased at the price. Poor innocent fools! the British taxpayer brings to mind that dear fat smiling millionaire, denizen of a West End club, to whom every day impecunious fellow-members would propose a game of picquet or ecarte, well knowing that it was the quickest way in London to earn a certain L200. Your Commissions may sit upon the educational standard of your officers, upon the sequel to your own folly in ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... for that kind of amusement, surely. Romance and history have both taught us that it is only the impecunious who ever ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... amount. Then Grendall had lost over L400 to Carbury,—an amount, indeed, that mattered little, as Miles could, at present, as easily have raised L40,000. However, he gave his I.O.U. to his opponent with an easy air. Grasslough, also, was impecunious; but he had a father,—also impecunious, indeed; but with them the matter would not be hopeless. Dolly Longestaffe was so tipsy that he could not even assist in making up his own account. That was to be left between him and Carbury ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... San Francisco to seek their fortunes. A small room adjoining my office was vacant, and the brothers requested me to secure it for them as cheap as possible. I applied to Reese, telling him who the young men were, and describing their broken and impecunious condition. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... the basement, where the condemned felon in silence awaited his doom, or the airy wards above, where the impecunious debtor or the runaway sailor meditatively or riotously defied their traditional enemies the constable and policeman, now echo the Hebrew, Greek and Latin utterances of the Morrin College professors, and on meeting nights the disquisitions before the Literary and Historical ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... the world's wise indulgent maxims, especially when we consider that Miss MacArgent's father's income, daily, is almost identical with the amount of dollars and cents that find their way to the pockets of the impecunious Bob in a ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... back there—" his voice suddenly rose and took on a passionate tremor as he lifted one gauntleted hand in a sweep toward the west—"back there in your country, where you were a grandee of finance and I an impecunious foreigner, there was no ceremony between us. If we can forget this livery"—Karyl savagely struck his breast—"if you will try to forget that you are looking at a toy King, fancifully trimmed from head to heel in braid and medals—then perhaps ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... is sometimes called, has a delicate gray vein, which is brought out by polish on the cornice and balustrade, as a relief to the unpolished surface elsewhere displayed. There is no inscription; but visitors are usually told about Mrs. Charlotte Hart, the apparently impecunious pew-opener at the church, who surprised her friends by dying worth close upon L3,000, and by leaving L600 to the restoration fund. A new pulpit happened to be wanted at the time, and the bequest was applied in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... lighted in that cavernous kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen. A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in return for board and lodging ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... of Erin in the shape of an impecunious Irish nobleman, who enlisted on the same day with Polson and whose uniform was tried ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... called to the Bar, I'd an appetite fresh and hearty, But I was, as many young barristers are, An impecunious party. I'd a swallow-tail coat of a beautiful blue - A brief which was brought by a booby - A couple of shirts and a collar or two, And a ring that ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... where public affairs are controlled by a class of voters in every way as ignorant and irresponsible as the blacks, but where bulldozing has never yet been suggested as a remedy. For the rest, the evidences of political oppression are abundant and convincing. The bulldozers as a class are more impecunious and irresponsible than the negroes, and, unlike the negroes, they will not work. There has been more of the "night-riding," the whippings, the mysterious disappearances, the hangings, and the terrorism comprehended in the term bulldozing than ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... murderer of memory!" spoke the spirit, sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various

... like one of those flat stone jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability stand ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... take place: not in the days of the dear Colonel's prosperity, nor yet at Carter Hall, but in his impecunious days in New York, while he was still living in the little house on Bedford Place within a stone's throw of the tall clock-tower of Jefferson Market. This house, you will recall, sat back from the street behind a larger and more modern dwelling, its only outlet to the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... counts for much. I am glad you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque, over which I licked my fingers with a sound conscience. I had not meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that the MacDowell Colony is in no sense a philanthropic enterprise. Although it does strive as far as possible to lower the barriers which lack of means so often places in the path of talent, yet it is not intended primarily for the impecunious. The qualification for admission to the Colony is talent. A prospective colonist must either have some fine achievement to his credit, or be possessed of a talent for which two recognized artists in his own field are willing ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... signature a delicious dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy, something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good many patients for ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford

... were proclaimed immediately after the betrothal, and a month later Herr Weigand, in his capacity of son-in-law, could take possession of the same garret which he had inhabited as an impecunious guest. This arrangement, however, was not a permanent one. An inn was to be rented for the young ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... When a very impecunious youth, who could barely afford to pay for his cab fares, lost a pound to him at whist, Lord Houghton said, as he pocketed the coin, "Ah, my dear boy, the great Lord Hertford, whom foolish people called the wicked Lord Hertford—Thackeray's Steyne and Dizzy's Monmouth—used ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... money I should not be able to give them anything at the conclusion of my visit, there has generally been a perceptible falling off in their activity. Christian servants do not clamour in this way, and give a pleasant "tank you" when they are given something, and take great care of an impecunious wayfarer. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... the sale accomplished and he rich beyond his wildest dreams, he was precisely the same man in bearing, manner, and speech that he had been in his impecunious days in Bedford Place. He was rich then—in hopes, in plans, in the reality of his dreamland. He was no richer now. The check in his pocket ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the trouble by having the team over to dinner, "Pug" Coulan and all. After all, why not? No foreign and impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as our town. They get only as far as New York, or Newport, where they are gobbled up by many-moneyed matrons. If Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne found the supply of available lions limited, why should ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... When she spoke at all, she was likely to say something about "family"; and it was gathered that the dashing correspondent at Nashville was conspicuously "well-connected." Also, that he belonged to the stirring New South and had put money in his purse. Hortense's contempt for the semi- rustic and impecunious Cope ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... surprised by the almost uniform behaviour of the men who frequented her house. Old or young, rich or impecunious, directly they perceived how comely Mavis was, and that her husband was an invalid, did not hesitate to consider her fair game to be bagged as soon as may be. Looks, manners, veiled words, betrayed their thoughts; but, somehow, even the hardiest veteran amongst them did not get so far as a declaration ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... employment of a corrupted version of his name. It is of course untrue that Fastolfe was ever the intimate associate of Henry V when Prince of Wales, who was not his junior by more than ten years, or that he was an impecunious spendthrift and gray-haired debauchee. The historical Fastolfe was in private life an expert man of business, who was indulgent neither to himself nor his friends. He was nothing of a jester, and was, in spite of all imputations ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... nothing stops him, neither the worth of the man, nor the value of the services he may have rendered. One can readily conceive that German generals live in a state of perpetual fright. Add to all this that William is becoming impecunious. He has taken to borrowing, and is reduced to making money out of everything. What will the Sultan Abdul Hamid say when he learns that the Grand Marshal of the German Court has put up for sale the presents which ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... continued vivaciously, "that it leads to matrimonial complications, as the men who seek employment as Brothers are usually so very impecunious that they understand that marriage is out of the question for them. I was told by my friends, by which I mean all those who felt themselves privileged to say nasty things to me, that we should degenerate into a matrimonial ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... married life of this parish; but he will be ridiculously mistaken if he supposes the ugliness to be normal. A kind of dogged comradeship—I can find no better word for it—is what commonly unites the labouring man and his wife; they are partners and equals running their impecunious affairs by mutual help. I was lately able to observe a man and woman after a removal settling down into their new quarters. It was the most ordinary, matter-of-fact affair in the world. The man, uncouth and strong, like a ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... spirit seemed to sink lower and lower as I neared the place; for it was terrible to think of those whom I had left, if not in affluence, at least in a comfortable position in life, brought down to so sad and impecunious a state, suffering real poverty, and with the home of so many years now ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... rather than allow Antoinette to see her husband's telegram. He even sent more than was necessary, muttering to himself: "The poor devil may have some bills to settle before he can get away, and in any event she must not be disappointed because her impecunious husband lacks a few dollars. I fancy the poor artist will be amazed to find himself suddenly raised from poverty to affluence, for little Lory's income will be enormous and he will have seven years, at least, ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... that evening after attending one of the weekly sessions at the Colophon Club, where he had reluctantly contributed the sum of fifty-seven dollars to relieve the immediate needs of certain impecunious persons gathered there about a green-baize-covered table in a remote corner of the card room, he perceived by the light of an adjacent street lamp that someone was sitting upon the top of the steps leading ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... forever! Go to London or Paris or Vienna, and wear tiaras and coronets, and speak of disgraceful, boorish America in hushed whispers! The empty-headed fool! She forgets that the tarnished name she bears was dragged up out of the ruck of the impecunious by me when I received Jim Crowles into my house! And that I gave him what little gloss he was able ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... do other than acknowledge the results obtained. Molly looked more like a stately young empress than an impecunious doctor's daughter as she floated into the room, to be embraced and complimented by the Lavender Lady and to receive a generous meed of admiration, seasoned with a little gentle banter, from ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... "A writ of inquisition, you might as well substitute. The act of a polluted, impecunious, parsimonious,—what shall I say? Well, I will be as simple as possible: hotel keeper. In other words, a damnation blighter, sir. Ninety-seven dollars and forty cents. For that pitiful ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... it was rumored that it took three secretaries, working nine hours a day, to cope with the written proposals, and that butler after butler contracted clergyman's sore throat through denying admittance to amorous callers. In the ten years after Alexander Baynes' death, every impecunious aristocrat in the civilized world must have made his dash for the matrimonial pole. But her pale eyes looked them over, and ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... in quickly enough, for she wore a white hat of the proportions of a parachute, which might have wafted her away into the coloured clouds of evening. She was their one splash of splendour, and irradiated wealth in that impecunious place (staying there temporarily with a friend), an heiress in a small way, by name Rosamund Hunt, brown-eyed, round-faced, but resolute and rather boisterous. On top of her wealth she was good-humoured and rather good-looking; ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... an open grated floor; on this the naked corpses are placed until the carrion crows and the vultures pick the skeleton perfectly clean; the dry bones are then cast into a common receptacle in the tower. The guebre communities of Persia are too impecunious or too indifferent to keep up the ever-burning-fires nowadays; the fires of Zoroaster, which in olden and more prosperous times were fed with fuel night and day, are now extinguished forever, and the scattering survivors of this ancient form of worship ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... those who were with him at different times afterwards accompanied his rival, either as captains or pilots of his expeditions. Notable among these was Vicente Yanez Pinzon, one of the noble family that came to the rescue of Columbus when in straits at Palos, and furnished the funds with which the impecunious navigator provided and equipped the vessel he had promised his sovereigns to contribute. The Pinzons actually provided and manned this vessel, the Nina, though Columbus had the credit of it, ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... economical regions. It is a very equitable arrangement, for it is only the rich man who can save money in this way, while his poorer neighbor, who has no country-seat to which he may escape, must pay to the uttermost farthing. The system stimulates the impecunious to become wealthy and helps the rich to become richer. It is, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... at last, "an impecunious prince who marries an American heiress, as so many of them do. The girl begins life in Austria on one million dollars, say two hundred thousand pounds, and a case of diamonds said to be worth another two hundred thousand at least—probably more. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence and of the insensate shrieking against British rule. With a definite stake in the country the peasantry upon whom the Nationalist agitation mainly relies would cease to place their faith in the impecunious and blatant scoundrelism which fattens upon the discord and misery which it provokes in the name of Patriotism. Our Commissioner believes that the priests, who have an even stronger hold upon the people than the politicians, would find their power weakened if it were possible to greatly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... was the son of the latter, if he administered his goods after his death in 1560-61[223]; and if so, we are sure that Henry also was his son, as Henry was the brother of John. This is mentioned in the Declaration of 1587,[224] when Nicholas Lane proceeded against John as surety for his impecunious brother Henry. Henry was also summoned with John to appear as witness in the Mayowe and Webbe case, 23 Elizabeth. He had a wife called Margaret, whose death immediately follows his own in the Register of Snitterfield;[225] but ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... afterward Miss Featherstone had occasion to go to town. It was exceedingly inconvenient, for she was needed everywhere as usual, but gloves and boots must be replenished, even by impecunious heroines. As she came down Colonel Pinckney handed her into the carriage and followed her. She felt a little annoyed, but supposed he was driving only to the station: however, he sent the coachman home, and when the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... Play Lady Bountiful to Their Needy Classmates," she read. The words were arranged to form headlines, and below was written: "The latest whim of two wealthy students of Overton College has taken the form of Sweet Charity, and impecunious students of Overton whose finances will not permit of their making long railway journeys home for Christmas are to be the object of these young women's solicitude. Their less fortunate classmates will be their guests at a dinner on Christmas ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's manoeuvring was more monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull, wretched vapour, like the wraith of an impecunious suicide come into a fortune immediately after the fatal deed. The barometers and thermometers had sympathetically shared its depression, and their spirits (when they had any) were low. The cold cut like ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... was Handy, and no one ever thought of addressing him otherwise, even on the slightest acquaintance. When he had an engagement he was poorer than when he was out of a job. He was a daisy of the chronic impecunious variety. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... handsome woman like Helen Markson. I tried to speak in a very low tone, but Mrs. Markson seemed to understand what I said, for she favored me with a look more malevolent than any I had ever received from my most impecunious debtor; the natural effect was to wake up all the old Adam there was in me, and to make me ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care. Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... very vividly now. It was in the summer time and about seven years ago. I was practising at the time down in the little town of Bradford. It was a small and primitive place, just the location for an impecunious medical man, recently out ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... little pocket money, and no doubt ample leisure. It was necessary for Gay to earn his livelihood, for he had spent his patrimony, and the earnings of his pen were as yet negligible. Indeed, the situation was almost ideal for an impecunious young man of letters. Anyhow, Gay was delighted, and Pope not less so. "It has been my good fortune within this month past to hear more things that have pleased me than, I think, in all my time besides," Pope wrote to Gay, December 24th, 1712; "but nothing, upon my word, has been ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... great battle against poverty, and having gained an education in spite of difficulties, and having supplied a city church acceptably for some months during the absence of the pastor in Europe, he came back to our native village to rest on his laurels a few weeks, and to decide which of three rather impecunious calls he would accept. When just about to leave he took it into his head, for some reason, to "drop in" on old Doctor Hood. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and the doctor's partner was making morning calls, while the old gentleman sat in his ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... penniless younger son, or some dissipated captain in a marching regiment? I am sure even under such circumstances I should not perform the part of the 'cruel parent' in the comedies! I should say, 'Bless you my children,' with all my heart! And I should enrich the impecunious young son, or reform the tipsy soldier. Anything but the convent for my only child!" concluded the banker, with ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... indigent; poverty-stricken; badly off, poorly off, ill off; poor as a rat, poor as a church mouse, poor as a Job; fortuneless[obs3], dowerless[obs3], moneyless[obs3], penniless; unportioned[obs3], unmoneyed[obs3]; impecunious; out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash; without a rap, not worth a rap &c.(money) 800; qui n'a pas le sou[Fr], out of pocket, hard up; out at elbows, out at heels; seedy, bare-footed; beggarly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Jack was a horse of a great deal of character, and had a great history; but of this none in that section, save the little deacon, knew a word. Dick Tubman, the deacon's youngest, wildest, and, we might add, favorite son, had purchased him of an impecunious jockey, at the close of a disastrous campaign, that cleaned him completely out, and left him in a strange city a thousand miles from home, with nothing but the horse, harness, and sulky, and a list of unpaid bills that must be met before he could leave the scene of his disastrous fortunes. Under ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... wife and daughters to a very considerable extent. They were afraid that something had happened, or was about to happen, in connection with the shoe corporation; and this deprived them of sleep, particularly the elder Miss Terwilliger, who had danced four times at a recent ball with an impecunious young earl, whom she suspected of having intentions. Ariadne was in a state of grave apprehension, because she knew that much as the earl might love her, it would be difficult for them to marry on his income, which was literally too small to keep the roof ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... brave man, but this demand, in his impecunious condition, instead of terrifying him, struck his sense of humor as an exceedingly ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... silent youth, deft in work, and at other times conscious and embarrassed. But that, on the part of a stenographer, in the presence of the Wisest Man in Wall Street, was not unnatural. On occasions, Mr. Thorndike had put even royalty—frayed, impecunious royalty, on the lookout for a ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... position of whose members is constantly changing, the style of life is of less importance. The millionaire of to-day hadn't a sixpence yesterday, and may not have one again to-morrow. His brothers, sifters and cousins are impecunious, and in small communities poor relations are not easily got rid of. Constant intercommunication is thus kept up between class and class, rich and poor; they learn better to understand each other's position, and a clearer understanding ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... a sharp contrast with Richardson. He was gentle-born, distinguished and fashionable in his connections: the son of younger sons, impecunious, generous, of strong often unregulated passions,—what the world calls a good fellow, a man's man—albeit his affairs with the fair sex were numerous. He knew high society when he choose to depict it: his education compared with Richardson's was liberal ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... several cases, in two at least with the happiest results. It would be a different thing to throw the whole place open with standing advertisement for eligible members at a salary of, L300 a year, paid quarterly. The horde of impecunious babblers and busybodies attracted by such a bait would trample down the class of men who compose the present House of Commons, and who are, in various ways, at touch with all the multiform ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... be fought to the bitter end Austria-Hungary will obviously suffer far more severely than will Germany. A protracted war, which would lead merely to the lasting impoverishment of Germany, would bring about the economic annihilation of impecunious Austria. Besides, while a complete defeat would cause to Germany only the loss of territories in the east, west, and north which are largely inhabited by disaffected Poles, Frenchmen, and Danes, and would not very greatly ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... every other circuit. Frank began pretty well, getting some little work in London, and perhaps nearly enough to pay the cost of his circuit out of the county in which the cathedral was situated. But he began life after that impecunious fashion for which the Greystocks have been noted. Tailors, robemakers, and booksellers gave him trust, and did believe that they would get their money. And any persistent tradesman did get it. He did not actually hoist the black flag of impecuniosity, and proclaim his intention ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... one nor the other, but continued to air his grievance; and among those who heard him was one Laporte, an impecunious visitor at the house ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... imagined yourself plunged (bodily, not mentally) into the midst of a story by some particular author? If, for example, you could get inside the covers of a Mrs. ALFRED SIDGWICK novel, what would you expect to find? Probably a large and pleasantly impecunious family, with one special daughter who combines great practical sense with rare personal charm. You would certainly not be startled to find her brought into contact with persons of greater social importance than her own; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various

... befell Borrow in the premature death of The Universal Review, which expired with the sixth number (March 1824— January 1825). It is not known what was the rate of pay to young and impecunious reviewers {49a} certainly not large, if it may be judged by the amount agreed upon for Celebrated Trials. Still, its end meant that Borrow was now dependent upon what he received for his compilation, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... man in high position, 'a concealed poet,'" who "took the works of others and rewrote and transformed them, besides bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is natural enough that his name should not appear among those [of the] for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money for playwriting." {163a} Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke Greville, or any other "man in high position," ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... admitted. "There are no hospitals for impecunious litigants; it is assumed that only persons of means have a right to go to law. Of course, if we knew the man and the circumstances we might be able to help him; but, for all we know to the contrary, he may be ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... often reduced not only to beg, but to borrow; and as this method of raising money might not always have been easy, even where security was offered, a system of pledging was devised by the authorities for the benefit of impecunious members of the University, both high and low. In all essentials this department is hardly distinguishable from a pawnbroking establishment conducted under respectable auspices, but we should go sadly astray ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... Marie and Fritz, both of whom I knew in a garrison city in eastern Germany. Nothing could illustrate better the difference between the German attitude and our own on certain matters. She was a charming, lovable girl of nineteen engaged to an impecunious young lieutenant a few years older. They moved in the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... delightfully simple and they were wholly unaware that it might have been called gross. A man over his head and ears in debt naturally expected his creditors would be paid by the young woman who had married him. America had in these days been so little explored by the thrifty impecunious well-born that its ingenuous sentimentality in certain matters was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... dear friend, the Maharajah of Bahanapur—you know him?—a very elegant young, handsome chap. A splendid Shikarri! I was often on the verge of asking if you were related; but being then but a second-class passenger, and under an impecunious cloud, did not dare to take the liberty. Now, being on the bed of clover owing to decease of wealthy uncle, I can address you without ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... countenance and society until, alarmed at the loss, they should dismiss the cause of it: but upon further reflection he came to the conclusion that it might be unwise to adopt so very drastic a step, for two very good and sufficient reasons, the first of which was that, being impecunious himself, he had fully made up his mind to marry Dona Isolda and thus acquire a substantial interest in the Montijo property and estates, and was therefore unwilling to do anything which might possibly jeopardise the position which he had worked so hard to gain ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... things; and she rejected the idea that "a lady should transact business", with the same contemptuous indignation that would have greeted a proposition to wear "machine-sewed garments", that last resort of impecunious plebeianism. However unwelcome Leo had found this assumption of the grave duties of mature womanhood, she met the responsibility unflinchingly, and gathered very firmly the reins transferred to her fair hands for guidance. Judge Dent and Miss ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... clerk. The gillie from a Scotch stream, and the bar-tender from a Yukon saloon walked side by side; and close to them a High Church curate in a captain's uniform grinned pleasantly and strolled on. The sheep-rancher, the poacher, the fifth son of an impecunious earl, and the man from the chorus were all there—leaving their respective lives behind them, the things which they had done, good and bad, the successes and the failures. For the moment nothing mattered save that seething ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... but for his daughter's sake he held his peace. Then, too, though he never forgave John Britton for having married his daughter, yet John Britton as a man whose wealth exceeded even his own was an altogether different person from the ambitious but impecunious lover of thirty years before. He had never forgiven Darrell for being John Britton's son, but mingled with his long-cherished animosity was a secret pride in the splendid physical and intellectual manhood of this sole representative of his ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... in Rome. He had hired one of the numerous private palaces, the Palazzo Costi, situated on a broad thoroughfare near the point where the Ponte St. Angelo connects Rome proper with that transtiberine suburb known as the Leonine City or Trastavere. The impecunious Roman nobility were ever ready to let their palaces to titled foreigners of wealth, and Ali, acting for the Count, had experienced no difficulty in procuring for his master an abode that even a potentate might have envied him. It was ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... like many thoughtful youths of a melancholy temperament, impecunious and discontented with their lot, and much given to the smoking of strong tobacco (on an empty stomach), I continuously brooded on the problems of existence—free-will and determinism, the whence and why and whither of man, the origin of evil, the immortality of the soul, the futility of life, etc., ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... of Gallic saints, and the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom. When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give; but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... depth of ruin without a wife, what would it have mattered? For years past he had been at the same kind of work,—but while he was unmarried there had been a charm in the very danger. And as a single man he had succeeded, being sometimes utterly impecunious, but still with a capacity of living. Now he had laden himself with a burden of which the very intensity of his love immensely increased the weight. As for not thinking of it, that was impossible. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... find the great characters. They are too great to get into the public world.' They are people who are natural—natural in a sense that the holders of high office never can be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... were gradually crowded out by the competition of the large slaveholders, who bought up their lands and forced them to occupy the foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system. Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum was composed of slaves with a slight intermixture of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... and I have been chums since she was four. We love each other, and she would be content to wait, but, in the meantime—well, you know my position. I can only describe it in the well-worn phrases, 'briefless barrister' and 'impecunious junior.' There's a great deal of truth in the weak old joke, Dennis, about the many that are called and the few that are briefed. Of course the General is right. He says that I ought to leave Myra absolutely alone, and neither write to her nor see her, and give her a chance to meet ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... was wide enough to obtain for him the post of Sheriff of the Home District. For several years no occasion for any difference of opinion arose between him and his superiors. He was known as a competent officer, who discharged his duties with great consideration for the impecunious and unfortunate. But his frequent official peregrinations through the Home District enabled him to see with his own eyes the disastrous effects of the Clergy Reserves, of the land-granting system, and of Family Compact domination generally; and on several occasions he had ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... brute is impecunious [wrote my father after the first suit failed], and that I shall get nothing out of him. So I shall have had three months' worry, and be fined 100 pounds sterling or so for being wholly ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Thackeray. In "Vanity Fair" we find it described as the temporary abode of the impecunious Colonel Crawley, and Moss describes his uncomfortable past and present guests in a manner worthy of Fielding himself. There is the "Honourable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose 'mar' had just taken him out after a fortnight, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... of the city was a large encampment of tents in which dwelt the more impecunious or more economical of the miners. Here too had been located a large hospital tent. There was a great deal of sickness, due to the hardships of the journey, the bad climate, irregular living, the overeating of fruit, drinking, the total lack of sanitation. In fact only the situation ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... written by Sir Walter Scott, but 'Guy Mannering,' she thinks, is by another hand: her mind is full of a genuine romantic devotion to books and belles lettres, and she is also rejoicing, even more, in the spring-time of 1816. Dr. Mitford may be impecunious and their affairs may be threadbare, but the lovely seasons come out ever in fresh beauty and abundance. The coppices are carpeted with primroses, with pansies and wild strawberry blossom,—the woods are spangled with the delicate flowers of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... the most sensitive of journalists. I shall return to Mr. Sala in another portion of these confessions, but am more concerned now with the parasites, the artistic failures, the common showmen, the traffickers in various wares, and other specimens of more or less impecunious humanity, who applied to me to let them participate in the profits of a success which I had toiled so hard to achieve. In imitation of Barnum, I might have had, if I had been so inclined, a series of side ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... the bedrooms on the first story could have used the intervening space as a balcony. Viewed from the rear, the architectural imperfections of the upper part of the house were in even stronger contrast with the ornamental first story. Apparently the impecunious builder, by the time he had reached the rear, had completely run out of funds, for on the third floor he had failed altogether to build in one small room, and had left ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... relieve their immediate wants; and it is plain that he constantly availed himself of their necessitous condition to effect bargains with them very advantageous to his own interests. Robert Daborne, the dramatist, for instance, appears to have been particularly impecunious, and he was, moreover, afflicted with a pending lawsuit; the sums he obtained for his plays from the manager were therefore very disproportionate and uncertain. His letters to Henslowe are urgent in solicitations ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... for days after my arrival at Sonning-on-Thames, was more difficult, well-nigh impossible, except at a price per diem which no staid old painter—they are all an impecunious lot—could afford. There were boys, of course, for the asking; sunburnt, freckle-faced, tousle-headed, barefooted little devils who, when my back was turned, would do handsprings over my cushions, landing on the mattress, or break the pole the first day out, leaving me high and dry on some island ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... with the finish of experts. But these are isolated cases. The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie may be cited as a typical novice. It did not strike him that inquiries might be instituted by Sir Thomas, when he found his money gone, and that Wesson, finding a man whom he knew to be impecunious suddenly in possession of twenty pounds, might have suspicions. His mind was entirely filled with the thought of getting the money. There was no room in it ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... diuert from deepest care. Nash was notoriously impecunious all through his life, and probably reference is here made to some bounty received at the hands of Lord Southampton (see Introduction). What patronage meant at times is gleaned from Florio's dedication of ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... games indulged by the vast majority of his class. Cared he naught for these, there was yet another, phase of mannish existence to which he might agreeably be introduced. But when aspiring sycophants, members of the great mass of impecunious people of "family," found that this eccentric son of Prince Michael failed to appreciate the charms of a single member of the opera ballet (now indulging in the delights of their summer vacation, and expending part of their savings ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... were adult males, had risen to a number (roughly estimated at 100,000) largely exceeding that of the whole Boer population. Although the first result of the working of the gold mines and the growth of the towns had been to swell the revenues of the previously impecunious Republic, President Kruger and the Boers generally were alarmed at seeing a tide of aliens from the British colonies and Europe and the United States, most of them British subjects, and nearly all speaking English, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed her only son through ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was settled. They continued to live in the room in the Rue Royer Collard, whither they returned every evening; the one glowing and radiant from his hot fire, the other with the depressed countenance of a shabby, impecunious teacher. Florent still wore his old black coat, as he sat absorbed in correcting his pupils' exercises; while Quenu, to put himself more at ease, donned his white apron, cap, and jacket, and, flitting about in front of the stove, amused himself by baking some dainty in the oven. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... and, behold, here was the loveliest Fatima ever seen, in the well-known Algerine dress, mated with a richly robed and turbaned hero, whose beard was blue, though in ordinary life red, inasmuch as he was Lady Flora's impecunious and not very reputable Scottish peer of a brother. That lady herself, in a pronounced bloomer, represented the little old woman of doubtful identity, and her husband the pedlar, whose 'name it was Stout'; while not far off the Spanish lady, in garments gay, as rich ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... expostulations—stood quietly smiling, and wiped his face at last with a kerchief of finest lawn. Dominating the others in the Babel rose the voice of Sir Rowland Blake—impecunious Blake; Blake lately of the Guards, who had sold his commission as the only thing remaining him upon which he could raise money; Blake, that other suitor for Miss Westmacott's hand, the suitor favoured by ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... his marriage, Lawrence (to whom George Washington owed his start in life) took his impecunious young half-brother into his home at Mount Vernon, whereupon the in-laws became intimately concerned with George's future. Young George was wise enough to realize that the way of advancement led through this important ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... the most important ones besides those demanded by Dr. Eliot are the providing of free or cheap lunches for undernourished children, and the system, already widespread in England and the other countries, of furnishing scholarships to carry the brighter children of the impecunious classes through the college, high school, and technical courses. Even this policy of scholarships would lead us to full democracy in education only if by its means the child of the poorest individual had exactly the same ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... the same smiling patron and the same table in the same corner awaited us. But change and experiment and a good deal of preliminary discussion over an aperitif were more in the order of a week's visit. As a rule, we preferred the small restaurant that was cheap, as we were most of us impecunious, also the restaurant that was out-of-doors, out-of-doors turning the simplest dinner into a feast. However, nobody yet was really ever young who was never reckless. Occasionally we dined joyously beyond our means, and one memorable year we devoted our nights ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... not need to be told what had brought the elder artist into such an impecunious condition. His face with its unnatural flush showed that his habits had been ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... said: "If the enemy have it in their power to press us hard this campaign, I know not what may be the consequence." He had faced the enemy, the bleak winters, raw soldiers, and all the difficulties of impecunious government, with a cheerful courage that never failed. But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... she said, "I agree there are limits. But up here, what does it matter if a woman's husband is an Engineer or a Paymaster or a Commander or only an impecunious Lieutenant like mine—as long as she is nice? Yet if it weren't for people like Sybil Gascoigne we should all be clinging to our ridiculous little pre-war sets, and talking of branches and seniority till we died of loneliness and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... curious salad and a wonderful cheese. Around him was the constant hum of gay conversation. Every one save himself seemed to have friends here, and many of them. It was indeed a very ordinary place, a cosmopolitan eating-house, good of its sort, and with an excellent connection of lighthearted but impecunious foreigners, who made up with the lightness of their spirits for the emptiness of their purses. To Douglas, whose whole upbringing and subsequent life had been amongst the dreariest of surroundings, there was something about it all peculiarly fascinating. The air of pleasant ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... pounds, diffused a green refulgence round itself in the middle of his very shiny shirt front; his waistcoat was embroidered and adorned with diamond buttons, his trousers were tight, and his name, with those of three or four other European financiers, made it alternately possible or impossible for impecunious empires and kingdoms to raise money in England, France and Germany. In matters of business, in the East, the Jew fears the Greek, the Greek fears the Armenian, the Armenian fears the Persian, and the Persian fears only Allah. One reason why the Jews do not care to return ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... had, however, outlived his sense of the injurious appellation; had outlived much prejudice, the wear of poverty, his memory of many things, and, very early, his scorn of the plebeian processes that to the impecunious are a condition of living at all. He was certainly a man of courageous independence, inasmuch as from the hour of his setting foot in England—and that was at the outset of the century—he had controlled his own little fortunes without a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... now be called the Promenade. The latter, as Misson informs us,[A] was taken up for the most part by ladies of quality. In addition to these quarters and the boxes, there were two galleries reserved for the common herd, but into which, no doubt, impecunious beaux, down in the heels and at the mouth, would ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... the Lady Eva Brackwell, the most beautiful DEBUTANTE of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to break off the match. Milverton will send the letters to the Earl unless a large sum of money is paid him. I have been commissioned to meet him, and—to make the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... impecunious painters were firmly warned away from Balmoral. The thought that all poets and painters were anarchistic and dangerous—certainly disagreeable—was firmly fixed in the heart of the young Queen and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... Bingley Crocker was one that would have provided an admirable "instance" for a preacher seeking to instil into an impecunious and sceptical flock the lesson that money does not of necessity bring with it happiness. And poetry has crystallised his position in ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... reduce, reduce to poverty; pauperize, fleece, ruin, bring to the parish. Adj. poor, indigent; poverty-stricken; badly off, poorly off, ill off; poor as a rat, poor as a church mouse, poor as a Job; fortuneless^, dowerless^, moneyless^, penniless; unportioned^, unmoneyed^; impecunious; out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash; without a rap, not worth a rap &c (money) 800; qui n'a pas le sou [Fr.], out of pocket, hard up; out at elbows, out at heels; seedy, bare-footed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... again, but the doctor refused to borrow from him. He had a conscientious objection to victimising his personal friends. Doyle, so he explained, lived very largely by lending money, and therefore offered himself as fair game to the impecunious borrower. The shopkeepers throve on a system of credit. They were fair game too. Major Kent was in a different case. To borrow from him was to take a mean advantage of the good nature of a simple, ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... aestheticism and asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many steps, some of them, unfortunately, false ones. She had been a well-born girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagant parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, "Money is given us to spend, not ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... side, a Tony as bright and beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe he was no longer a nameless, impecunious cub reporter, but a man who had arrived somewhere, made himself worthy, so far as any mere man could, of the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... while the Ministry obtained from the National Assembly a widow's pension for the Duchess of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil list;—and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial Pretender was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that the great idea of his being destined to restore the Empire was ever supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the French people was ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... his death clearly proved. According to the theory of the prosecution, Auguste believed that he had paid that money to Lebret through the intermediary of Castaing, and not to Castaing himself. Hence his surprise at hearing that Castaing, whom he knew to be impecunious, was investing such ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... twenty years ago, as the youngest of the pretty Wilde sisters, she had, in the romantic fervour of her youth and in spite of the opposition of her parents, made a love match with a handsome, impecunious young dabbler in "stocks." "Sophy is a creature of sentiment," her friends had urged in extenuation of a marriage which was not then considered in a brilliant light, but to the surprise of everybody, after the single venture by which she had proved ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... managers, slightly altered the plan, though not the purpose, of the work which Griffin had set himself to accomplish. He was compelled to give up writing tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of "Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various



Words linked to "Impecunious" :   impecuniousness, poor



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