What are the definitions of poor and poverty? Many people hear the words poverty and they have different meanings, so how do we know which definition and I poor is the correct one? According to many people, poverty can mean a person who has no money to do the things they want to do, however most people can only afford to live on the things they really need. This is just one example; there are many other definitions of the word poverty. What then, according to people, is the meaning of the word poor? Some might say that poor means not having enough money for that extra something at the supermarket or mall. What exactly are the true definitions of each word, how to tell the words apart, and how to know what to believe. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word poor means; wanting means producing comforts, or the things necessary for life; needy, destitute, destitute so destitute as to depend on gifts or allowances for subsistence. These are the dictionary definitions (OED), very academic, how do we know this is the correct definition of the word poor? Just because it's the definition in a book that everyone seems to trust or because so much research has been done on that definition still only gives you an idea of ​​what poor actually means. So how do we know the difference between the right definition and the wrong, or less correct, definition? There really is a true definition of the word poor, perhaps there is, but we don't know what the true meaning is and if we know the true meaning we might not even understand it. As for the word poverty, what does it mean? Also using the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) I found this definition, the condition or quality of being poor, middle of paper, with no clothes, and ending up losing his life by losing his farm. In using parts of the definitions I felt they fit the story of the Joad family and the book The Grapes of Wrath because so far everyone in the story has been affected by what is happening and the characters of each fit the definitions of poor and poverty well. Bottom line of my definitions of poor and poverty is that to get the true definition of poverty you have to think about many other definitions and include them all together and then decide when and how you can say that you or anyone else is actually considered poor or in poverty. You need to think a lot about the meaning of each of these words and many things should be taken into consideration before applying them. Work Cited OED: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition Oxford University Press 2002