An archaic or variant spelling of 'impoverish'; to make someone poor or to reduce their wealth or resources.
A variant of 'impoverish' from Old French 'appovrir', combining 'a-' + 'poverte' (poverty). The 'em-' variant may represent an earlier English form before standardization.
Medieval English had lots of spelling variations—you might find 'empoverish' and 'impoverish' used interchangeably in texts from the 1400s, which tells us that standardized spelling is actually a pretty recent invention!
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