Penuriousness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A condition marked by extreme reluctance to spend money often results from considerable financial hardship or a mindset of excessive frugality
2. The state of having very limited financial resources frequently drives one to be miserly and unwilling to share
3. An extreme lack of financial resources often leads to an unwillingness to spend, characterized by both scarcity and a miserly attitude toward wealth distribution

Etymology: Penuriousness is a plain English compound: the adjective "penurious" with the suffix "-ness", which turns a quality into a noun. The adjective itself comes from "penury", meaning extreme poverty, and so "penurious" originally described someone who was poor or lacking, before it came to mean grudging with money. The suffix has a long pedigree of its own, reaching back through Old English "-nes" to a Proto-Germanic ending used to form abstract nouns, so the word is built almost entirely from older parts. The final "-ness" is the stable part of the word, and it is the reason the noun reads as a description of a trait rather than a condition. Compounds of this kind are the usual way English names a quality: a penurious person shows penuriousness, and the noun simply gathers the trait into a single thing that can be discussed.

Synonyms: poverty, destitution, indigence, stinginess

Antonyms: wealth, generosity, affluence