penury

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*peh₁-“to hate; to hurt”
2. Latin · derived frompēnūria“need, scarcity, want”
3. Middle English · inherited frompenuri
4. English todaypenury

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”).

Words from the same roots