This paper aims to analyse how the term 'vulnerability' has been used in the Chronic Poverty Research Centre's (CPRC) initial set of working papers. The intention of this analysis is to show that 'vulnerability' can be utilised in a variety of ways, with different meanings, and different implications. This attempt at unravelling vulnerability within the CPRC literature shows that there could be merit in disaggregating 'vulnerability', and that this could be relevant to the study of chronic poverty.