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