penniless

English Wikipedia has articles on:

poverty and retirement of penny coin use

Wikipedia Wikipedia

• pennyless

From Middle English penyles, penylees; equivalent to penny +‎ -less. Compare Old Norse penningalauss (“penniless”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛ.nɪ.ləs/

penniless (not comparable)

2. Lacking even the smallest amount of money.

   Synonyms: farthingless; moneyless; destitute; see also Thesaurus:impoverished

   Antonyms: see Thesaurus:rich

   In societies without national insurance of any kind, almshouses are the last refuge of penniless people.

   In a functioning digital economy, being cashless is far different from being penniless, because cash is merely one form of money; but some preppers hoard gold in case the system gets destroyed and cashlessness suddenly becomes pennilessness.

   • 1889, Horatio Alger, chapter 10, in Driven From Home:

     A dollar and a quarter seems a small sum, but if you are absolutely penniless it might as well be a thousand.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything. In a moment she had dropped to the level of a casual labourer.

4. (numismatics, of a country's system of money) Abstaining from the use of penny coins, despite having fully decimalized currency, via rounding of cash transactions (but not necessarily of cashless ones).

   Canada became a penniless country in 2013 simply by rounding its cash transactions to the nearest nickel but otherwise not changing anything.