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)

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, 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

immiserate

Translations

synonym of immiserization — see immiserization

References

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