penury

Meanings

1. Extreme need or want; destitution, poverty; (countable) an instance of this.
2. Often followed by of: a lack of something; a dearth, a scarcity.
3. The quality of being miserly; miserliness, parsimoniousness, stinginess.

Etymology

From Late Middle English penuri, penurie (“destitution, need, poverty; dearth, lack, scarcity”), borrowed from Latin pēnūria (“need, scarcity, want”) + Middle English -i, -ie (suffix forming abstract and collective nouns); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to paene (“almost, nearly; barely, hardly, scarcely”, adverb), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate; to hurt”).