immiseration

English

WOTD – 25 September 2022

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ɪmɪzəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ɪmɪzəˈɹeɪʃən/
  • Rhymes: -eɪʃən
  • Hyphenation: im‧mi‧ser‧at‧ion

Noun

immiseration (countable and uncountable, plural immiserations)

  1. 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.

Derived terms

Translations

References

  1. ^ Compare “immiserization, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2021; “immiseration, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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