They lived in dread of the pettiest casual expense, for the day of pennilessness was again approaching.    From Wordnik.com.  [New Grub Street] Reference

My efforts are utterly vain; I suppose the prospect of pennilessness is itself a hindrance; the fear haunts me.    From Wordnik.com.  [New Grub Street] Reference

To hear her tell it, rich, supportive husbands are always dropping dead of heart attacks, or going to the loony bin, or running off with the secretary, leaving poor “Patsy” on the perilous precipice of pennilessness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Mommies Unite! You���ve Got Nothing to Lose!] Reference

In the midst of young Redburn's good manners and proper upbringing, his being the son of a Melville and a Gansevoort is a grotesque irrelevance; the truth of his life as others see it is his abject pennilessness, his humbling ragged clothes.    From Wordnik.com.  [Melville in Love] Reference

The prospect of abject pennilessness filled the damsel's eyes with woe.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Belovéd Vagabond] Reference

And she could weigh against that the absolute pennilessness of her baronet-son.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Way We Live Now] Reference

Christopherson's face was sufficient answer; it reminded me of his pennilessness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories] Reference

To his dire and utter pennilessness, Cousin Tryphena's tiny income seemed a fortune.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hillsboro People] Reference

It also works in both directions, since it can either heap rewards upon some members, or "cast ... some into some equivalent of pennilessness and unpopularity.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Google Blogoscoped] Reference

She knew that he could not marry Lucy, because of her pennilessness and his indebtedness; and therefore she had taken the trouble to see Lucy with the view of making things straight on that side.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Eustace Diamonds] Reference

She knew that he could not marry Lucy, because of his pennilessness and his indebtedness; and therefore she had taken the trouble to see Lucy, with the view of making things straight on that side.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Eustace Diamonds] Reference

She could see the man, from whom she had just parted, standing without, homeless and friendless, on the verge of pennilessness; a dead man in a living world, cut off from all the ties and duties of the home and the society he loved.    From Wordnik.com.  [Cobwebs and Cables] Reference

He had planned what it should be -- the story it should tell of a disheartened mediocre venturer of his poor all returning bankrupt and humiliated from Australia, ending existence in such pennilessness that the parish must give him a pauper's grave.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Dawn of a To-morrow] Reference

For, whatever their attainments and performances in preaching or in pastoral work may do to enrich others, one thing is certain: all they do only impoverishes to pennilessness the men who put their whole life and their whole heart into the performance of such work.    From Wordnik.com.  [Samuel Rutherford and some of his correspondents] Reference

It was very likely a pure impulse which led him and his wife to agree to sell their land; and it was only when they had the money in their hands, and had to take the decisive step of parting with it, and reducing themselves to pennilessness, that they found the surrender harder than they could carry out.    From Wordnik.com.  [Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts] Reference

Alas! alas! in her dire distress -- in her sense of miserable pennilessness, she clung to Mr. John Raikes, of the curricle, the mysteriously rich young gentleman; and on that picture, with Andrew roguishly contemplating it, and Evan, with feelings regarding his sister that he liked not to own, the curtain commiseratingly drops.    From Wordnik.com.  [Evan Harrington — Complete] Reference

This allows for strong abilities like the secret buyings of newspapers in Psmith, Journalist, easing Mike’s life of pennilessness and even solving it in Psmith in the City, and of course having been at Eton in Mike and Psmith, and having the familial status to absolve the worst of falls he could have had in all the times he’s shielded Mike.    From Wordnik.com.  [Kindle-licious on Wodehouse’s Psmith: Love is an Umbrella | Spontaneous ∂erivation] Reference

Would you, for one, turn the cold shoulder to a friend -- a convivial one, say, whose pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to you? ".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Confidence-Man] Reference

pennilessness for vast stretches of time.    From Wordnik.com.  [found while packing] Reference

– the wave of water, the ruin, the flight, the pennilessness, the tatters, the solitude – let all of this be a figure of the shipwreck and the island where he, poor Robin, was secluded from the world for twenty-six years, till he almost went mad (and indeed, who is to say he did not, in some measure?).    From Wordnik.com.  [Nobel Lecture - Literature 2003] Reference