«لَا بِيتْ مِلْكْ وَلَا طَاحُونَهْ شِرْكْ»

The expression describes a person who owns nothing at all. The saying names no subject; the person is understood from context. It names two familiar forms of property, a house held outright and a partner's stake in a jointly owned mill, and denies both, so the listener understands that the person has no solid holdings whatsoever.

The pairing moves from full ownership to even a partial, shared interest, which shuts off every possibility. Not only does the person lack a home of his own, he cannot claim even a fraction of a productive asset. The effect is a blunt, emphatic picture of complete lack of means.

Use it to describe someone with no property or assets, whether to state plainly that a person is poor or to point out that a would-be suitor, partner, or borrower has nothing to his name. The two named holdings stand in for wealth of any kind.