phrase

• Extremely short of money.

  ‘Is it just sour grapes because I'm poor as a church mouse and live half a planet away from all the action?’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Everyone was as poor as church mice but you enjoyed life without material things.’
  • ‘They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.’
  • ‘Whilst carving the oak beam he remarked, ‘I am as poor as a church mouse.’’
  • ‘The Mouseman, as he was known, adopted the mouse motif after overhearing a craftsman speaking of being as poor as a church mouse.’
  • ‘The local officials (who secured and guaranteed the loan) have long been replaced and the farmers are as poor as church mice,’ Chen said.’
  • ‘Basically, here is my deal: I just graduated from law school (I went to Pitt) and I am as poor as a church mouse, as I have yet to find a ‘real’ job, and I am trying to pay some horrid student loans.’
  • ‘He also learns that his brother is very well off and confides in the priest that he is unsure how his brother will receive him since he is as poor as a church mouse now.’
  • ‘For Louis Hawthorne had been written out of his father's will and was, at that time, as poor as a church mouse.’

  Synonyms

  poverty-stricken, impoverished, necessitous, beggarly, in penury, penurious, impecunious, indigent, needy, needful, in need, in want, badly off, low-paid, in reduced circumstances, in straitened circumstances, destitute, hard up, short of money, on one's beam-ends, unable to make ends meet, underprivileged, deprived, penniless, without a sou, as poor as a church mouse, moneyless