immiseration

English

WOTD – 25 September 2022

From im- (prefix meaning ‘in; into; to; towards’) +‎ miser(able) +‎ -ation (suffix denoting actions or processes, or their results), a variant of immiserization.^[1]

immiseration (countable and uncountable, plural immiserations)

Synonym of immiserization (“the process of making miserable or poor, especially of a population as a whole; impoverishment, pauperization”)
- 2010, Jacqueline Stevens, “Introduction”, in States without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, New York, N.Y., Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 23:
  Even Thomas More, the most populist of the sixteenth-century humanists striving to overcome the immiserations of serfdom, did not question slavery but endorsed it, as did, of course, the U.S. government as late as 1861.
- 2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, published 2012, →ISBN, page 627:
  Unimaginable amounts of suffering have been caused by tyrants who callously presided over the immiseration of their peoples or launched destructive wars of conquest.

synonym of immiserization — see immiserization