The phrase ‘terrible’ has numerous meanings and uses. Its that means can range relying on its context and the speaker’s tone of voice.
‘Poor’ as an adjective
The adjective poor method now no longer having sufficient cash to stay at a fashionable that society considers as regular or comfortable. A poor individual or family earns little or no cash as compared to others withinside the network or country.
We also can use the time period whilst regarding human beings or households who’ve only a few and occasional great fabric possessions along with clothes, shoes, shelter, etc. Extremely poor human beings won’t have any possessions at all.
The adjective contrasts with wealthy, wealthy, properly to do, or prosperous.
The adjective poor additionally method of awful great, i.e., of an inferior or low fashionable. If I say: “My examination effects had been poor,” I suggest that they had been awful. Consumers try and keep away from shopping for poor great goods. In this context, ‘poor great’ method ‘inferior’ or ‘substandard great.’
‘Poor as an adjectival noun
An adjectival noun is an adjective that capabilities as a noun.
‘The poor’ refers to folks that stay in poverty. When we use the adjective as a noun, we’re speaking approximately a collection of people in society.
If we location the exact article (‘the’) earlier than a few adjectival nouns, we’re thinking about precise human beings collectively as a collection. For example:
- The poor = poor people in general.
- The rich = wealthy people in general.
- The elderly = old people in general.
- The blind = blind human beings in general.
Some people say that phrases like ‘the poor’ or ‘the blind’ aren’t politically accurate. ‘The poor,’ they argue, denotes a great, undifferentiated mass; it stereotypes a huge institution of human beings. It is visible as greater politically accurate to say ‘low profits human beings’ or ‘low profits households.’
The Cambridge Dictionary has the following meanings of the term:
“1. Having little cash and/or few possessions. 2. Not good; being of a totally low great, quantity, or fashionable. 2. (The poor) terrible people taken into consideration collectively as a collection.”
Etymology of poor
Etymology is the observe of the beginning of phrases and the way their meanings evolved.
According to etymonline.com, the word emerged in the English language withinside the 12th century with the that means “scanty, destitute, needy, missing cash and resources, small, indigent.” It got here from the Old French phrase Povre, which meant “wretched, dispossessed, inadequate, thin, weak, poor.”
The Old French global got here from the Latin phrase Pauper, which meant “poor, not wealthy.”
It wasn’t till the fourteenth century that the phrase additionally meant “of inferior great.”