impecunious

Protagonist Louden Swain, a high-school senior, can’t fathom why Elmo, an older and impecunious cook at the hotel where they’re both employed, is missing work to watch him wrestle.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026

We’re not talking public or academic institutions, but what any impecunious collector vainly covets — an English country-house library or what Byers calls a “bookwrapt” study like that of Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady.”

From Washington Post ● Sep. 28, 2021

As a young, eager-to-please novelist, he had transformed his impecunious father into the whimsical and charming Mr. Micawber of “Copperfield”; after his father’s death came a more selfish and unforgiving version in “Little Dorrit.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2020

In my days as an impecunious young cineaste, there was the Tolmer cinema in Euston, the cheapest picturehouse in London, or anywhere – two shillings a time.

From The Guardian ● May 15, 2020

She had no understanding of her husband’s work and, having been raised among the minor rural gentry, she despised his impecunious profession.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan