land poor
See also: land-poor
English
Alternative forms
- land-poor
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Adjective
land poor (comparative more land poor, superlative most land poor)
- (US, idiomatic) In a condition of poverty as a result of inability to meet tax payments or other financial requirements for one's land holdings.
- 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, “chapter XV”, in The House Behind the Cedars:
- "I was offered a thousand acres, the other day, at twenty-five cents an acre," remarked the doctor. "The owner is so land-poor that he can't pay the taxes."
- 1913, Jack London, The Valley of the Moon, ch. 18:
- [A]ll the rest of the surrounding land was owned by a Frenchman. . . . He was a land-miser. With no business capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an open question which would arrive first, his death or bankruptcy.
- 1924, Ambrose Elliott Gonzales, "The Quest of the Land" in The Captain: Stories of the Black Border (1972 reprint edition by Ayer Publishing), →ISBN, p. 111:
- Altho' most of the planters were "land poor" and burdened by the heavy taxes of "Reconstruction," and altho' many Negroes, having abandoned hope of "forty acres and a mule" from the Federal Government, were now ready to buy ten acres and an ox, the sale of land to Negroes was generally reprobated.
- 2011, Irene Brand, chapter 9, in Song of her Heart, →ISBN:
- Most ranchers are land poor—lots of land, but not much money.
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See also
- house poor