Poor or pour?
poor is an adjective meaning “With no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries…”; pour is a verb meaning “To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of…”. Use poor as an adjective and pour as a verb. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) poor is about 9.8 times as common as pour.
What is the difference between poor and pour?
| poor | pour | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, noun, verb | verb, noun |
| Meaning | With no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries who do have them Of low quality The poor people of a society or the world collectively, the poor class of a society | To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it To send out as in a stream or a flood; to cause (an emotion) to come out; to cause to escape The act of pouring |
| Example | We were so poor that we couldn't afford shoes | pour water from a jug |
| Forms | poorer, poorest | pours, pouring, poured |
| Pronunciation | /pʊɚ/ /pʊɹ/ /pɔɹ/ | /pɔː/ /poɹ/ /po(ː)ɹ/ |
| In writing | 123 times per million words | 13 times per million words |
Sources: poor and pour in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of poor and pour
poor
- 1
With no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries who do have them
We were so poor that we couldn't afford shoes
- 2
The poor people of a society or the world collectively, the poor class of a society
Then there have not always been proletarians? No. There have always been poor and working classes; and those who worked were almost always the poor. But there have not always been…
- 3
A poor person
The poors are at it again
- 4
Of low quality
That was a poor performance
- 5
the second-to-last placer in Tycoon
- 6
Worthy of pity
Oh, you poor thing, you're drenched!
- 7
Deficient in a specified way
Cow's milk is poor in iron
- 8
Inadequate, insufficient
I received a poor reward for all my hard work
pour
- 1
To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it
pour water from a jug
- 2
The act of pouring
The bartender's inexpert pour left me with a pint of beer that was half foam
- 3
To send out as in a stream or a flood; to cause (an emotion) to come out; to cause to escape
My teacher poured scorn on my attempts at writing
- 4
Something, or an amount, poured
- 5
To send forth from, as in a stream; to discharge uninterruptedly
- 6
colloquialA downpour; a flood of precipitation
- 7
To flow, pass, or issue in a stream; to fall continuously and abundantly
the rain poured down
- 8
To rain hard
It's pouring outside
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, poor or pour?
poor appears 123 times per million words; pour 13 times per million words.
poor 123 times per million wordspour 13 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search poor vs pour?
“poor vs pour” is searched about 320 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“pour vs poor”, “poor or pour”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.