Definition of "have-not" [have-not]

• One enjoying little or no material wealth: "The gap between the haves and the have-nots still shows up clearly at the polls” ( Brad Edmondson). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "She did after all, really blow it in the have/have-not competition and we all know she's playing both sides."
• "In the have and have-not society of golden-age Athens, wallowing in luxury and public ostentation became a pivot for societal change, as the statesman Pericles suggested such showiness was ultimately not worthy of the Greeks, and altogether more a Persian way of carrying on."
• "But in a season when we are surrounded by so much, by a superabundance of plenty of everything, it's good to know that a relatively modest investment of time and money can move someone whom the world has dealt a massively unfair hand from the have-not side of the ledger to the have side."