poor as a church mouse

Alteration of earlier hungry as a church mouse, from the fact that Catholic and Orthodox priests are called to scrupulously prevent any crumb of the sacrament of Eucharist (the bread which is understood to be Christ's body) from falling on the altar or to the ground, meaning that church mice had no crumbs to feed on. This phrase seems to be a corruption of the even earlier expression “as quiet as a church mouse” from the 1300s.

• "But to return to our public functions; that we have had a decided turn for the church appears from the fact that the church-mouse is a recognised order amongst us, and it is our just pride that we alone have preserved the genuine character of the institution as founded by the Apostles, inasmuch as our poverty has passed into a proverb— "as poor as a church-mouse.""
• "She was an Eastern Virginia woman, and, although poor as a church mouse, thought herself superior to West Virginia people."
• ""As poor as a poet" would be quite as comprehensible as "as poor as a church mouse.""
• "Pulford is currently building a raised bed for an allotment, and another school garden is due to open soon. "I'm poor as a church mouse, but I wake up a happy man," he says."

• poor as a rat
• poor as Job
• almsless
• arm
• badly off
• bankrupt
• beggared
• beggarly
• boracic
• broke
• broken
• broker than the Ten Commandments
• destitute
• dirt poor
• disadvantaged
• down and out
• down at heel
• down on one's luck
• down on one's uppers
• empty-handed
• feeling the pinch
• flat
• hard up
• impecunious
• impoverished
• in need
• indigent
• insolvent
• lower-class
• necessitous
• needy
• oofless
• pauperized
• penniless
• penurious
• pinched
• pok kai
• poor
• poor as a church mouse
• poor as a rat
• poor as Job
• possessionless
• poverty-ridden
• poverty-stricken
• shillingless
• skint
• stone-broke
• stony-broke
• strapped
• stuck
• threadbare
• unwealthy
• wealthless

• quiet as a church mouse