Parsimonious

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /pɑː.sɪˈməʊ.ni.əs/

Definitions

  1. Unwilling to spend money or resources generously; marked by extreme frugality or reluctance to incur expense
  2. Showing a strong reluctance to part with money or resources, often avoiding expenditure whenever possible
  3. Characterized by a tight grip on spending, demonstrating great care and avoidance of unnecessary costs

Etymology: When Virgil had the ghost of Anchises tell Rome its mission, to "parcere subiectis et debellare superbos," spare the conquered and war down the proud, he used the same Latin verb that lies at the root of an English word for a tight fist. "Parcere" meant to spare, whether that meant sparing a defeated enemy's life or sparing your coins. From that verb came the Latin noun "parsimonia," also spelled "parcimonia," meaning frugality. For Romans it was a virtue. Cicero, in his Paradoxa Stoicorum, wrote that people do not understand "quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia": how great a source of income thrift is. A careful household and a careful state were the foundations of Roman respectability, and "parsimonia" was praise. English took the noun in the early fifteenth century, first as Middle English "parcimonie," keeping the "c" of one Latin spelling before the "s" form won out. Parsimony at first meant simply carefulness with money. The adjective came later, formed in English by joining parsimony to "-ous," the suffix that descends through Old French from Latin "-osus," "full of." It is recorded by the 1590s. Being "full of thrift" did not stay a compliment. Prudence curdled into meanness, and to call someone parsimonious came to suggest not a sensible economist but a person who winces at every expense. The Roman virtue had become an English vice. Scholars, however, rescued the older sense. By the nineteenth century, philosophers spoke of a "law of parsimony": an explanation should use no more assumptions than it needs. The principle is usually credited to the fourteenth-century friar William of Ockham, though the famous slogan "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" does not appear in his surviving writings. Scientists still praise a parsimonious theory, one that spares its assumptions the way a Roman spared his denarii.

Synonyms: stingy, miserly, frugal, tightfisted, sparing

Antonyms: generous, extravagant, lavish, openhanded, profligate