parsimonious

English

WOTD – 15 December 2015

Etymology

parsimony +‎ -ious

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɑː.sɪˈməʊ.ni.əs/

  • Audio (UK):

    (file)

• IPA^(key): /pɑɹ.sɪˈmoʊ.ni.əs/
• Hyphenation: par‧si‧mon‧i‧ous

Adjective

parsimonious (comparative more parsimonious, superlative most parsimonious)

1. Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in the expenditure of money; frugal to excess.

   Synonyms: penurious, niggardly, stingy, pennywise, tight-fisted; see also Thesaurus:frugal, Thesaurus:stingy

   • 1842, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lady Anne Granard, volume 1, page 68:

     He was regular in his habits, parsimonious, and industrious; but he lacked all talent needed at the bar—he had neither address, nor eloquence, nor ingenuity.

   • 1898, William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, in War and Other Essays, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, published 1911, →OCLC, page 333:

     Our fathers would have an economical government, even if grand people called it a parsimonious one, and taxes should be no greater than were absolutely necessary to pay for such a government.

   • 2002 January, “55 great personal-finance ideas”, in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, volume 56, number 1, Washington, D.C.: Kiplinger Washington Editors, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 53, col. 3:

     The first three college-savings plans stand out for their parsimonious expenses […]

2. Using a minimal number of assumptions, steps, or conjectures.
   • 2006, Richard Bonneau [et al.], “The Inferelator: An Algorithm for Learning Parsimonious Regulatory Networks from Systems-biology Data Sets de Novo”, in Genome Biology, volume 7, number 5, London: BioMed Central, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, →PMCID, page R36:

     Statistical methods offer the ability to enforce parsimonious selection of the most influential potential predictors of each gene's state.

3. (sports) Not conceding many goals.

Derived terms

• equiparsimonious
• imparsimonious
• nonparsimonious
• parsimoniously
• parsimoniousness
• unparsimonious
• unparsimoniously

 

Translations

Exhibiting parsimony

• Catalan: parsimoniós
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 小氣／小气 (zh) (xiǎoqì)

• Czech: spořivý m, lakomý (cs) m
• Dutch: zuinig (nl), gierig (nl)
• Finnish: kitsas (fi), pihi (fi)
• French: pincé (fr), avare (fr), parcimonieux (fr)
• German: sparsam (de), geizig (de), karg (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient: φειδωλός (pheidōlós)

• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: parsimonioso (it)
• Maori: moānanga, kukumomo, tūmatarau
• Norwegian: sparsom, økonomisk (no), gnien (no), beskjeden (no)
• Persian: خسیس (fa) (xasis)
• Portuguese: parcimonioso (pt) m, parco (pt) m
• Russian: скупо́й (ru) (skupój), бережли́вый (ru) (berežlívyj), жа́дный (ru) (žádnyj), ска́редный (ru) (skárednyj), эконо́мный (ru) (ekonómnyj)
• Spanish: parsimonioso (es)

Using a minimal number of assumptions, steps, or conjectures

• Spanish: parsimonioso (es)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

(sport) not conceding many goals

• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

Further reading

• “parsimonious”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.