dire vs poor

dire

adj
  • Bad in quality, awful, terrible. 

  • Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous. 

  • Expressing bad consequences: dreadful; dismal. 

  • Requiring action to prevent bad consequences: urgent, pressing. 

poor

adj
  • Of low quality. 

  • Deficient in a specified way. 

  • Inadequate, insufficient. 

  • Free from self-assertion; not proud or arrogant; meek. 

  • Used to express pity. 

  • With no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries who do have them. 

noun
  • A poor person. 

  • The poor people of a society or the world collectively, the poor class of a society. 

verb
  • Synonym of impoverish, to make poor. 

How often have the words dire and poor occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )