RichThesaurus
on one's uppers
vs
poor as a church mouse
on one's uppers
prep
destitute; poor.
poor as a church mouse
adj
Very poor, to the point of starving or begging; utterly destitute.
How often have the words
on one's uppers
and
poor as a church mouse
occurred in a corpus of books?
(source:
Google Ngram Viewer
)