parsimonious 
adjective

- not willing to spend money or to give or use a lot of something

- very unwilling to spend money or use resources

The Cambridge Dictionary, Oxford Languages

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ORIGIN

The word "parsimonious" has a Latin root: parsimonia (frugality, thrift), from: parcere (to spare, be sparing with). The Middle English form was: parcimonie. The Modern form emerged in the 15th-16th centuries.

The word originally had a purely positive connotation, simply meaning "frugal" or "economical". However, it gradually acquired negative overtones, often suggesting excessive frugality or stinginess that goes beyond reasonable economy.

Today "parsimonious" carries a double meaning - it can describe either admirable economy of resources or excessive cheapness, depending on context. In academic writing, particularly in philosophy and science, it often refers to explanations that are elegantly simple and avoid unnecessary complexity (as in "Occam's razor" or the "principle of parsimony").

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EXTREME PARSIMONY

In 2002 the British multi-millionaire Nicholas van Hoogstraten was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the manslaughter of his business partner. Police officers who performed the search in his house found a large number of used tea bags. He dried them, and then re-used them to make tea all over again.

Despite all that, Van Hoogstraten’s private mansion (Hamilton Palace in East Sussex) is larger than Buckingham Palace and is worth £40 million. The mansion includes a marble mausoleum he intends for himself.

Under English law, perpetual trusts are only allowed in the upkeep of monuments and graves. By using the palace as a mausoleum, van Hoogstraten’s trust (and his descendants) would legally own the buildings and their fittings in perpetuity after his death.

In the end, van Hoogstraten's parsimony is anything but economical—it costs him freedom, trust, and perhaps the very humanity that no fortune, however carefully preserved, can buy back.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

budget-conscious, cautious with cash, cheap, cheapskate, cheese-paring, chintzy, close-fisted, cost-conscious, counting every penny, covetous, frugal, grasping, grudging, hoarding, holding onto every cent, mean, measly, mingy, miserly, money-conscious, money-grubbing, money-pinching, niggardly, not one to splash out, PARSIMONIOUS, penny wise-pound foolish, penny-pinching, penny-wise, scrimping, Scrooge-like, skimping, skinflint-like, skinflinty, stingy, thrifty, tight, tight-assed, tight-fisted, tight-pursed, tight-wad, ungenerous, ungiving, watching every dime, watching the pennies, with shallow pockets

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Charles Dickens’ PARSIMONIOUS Mr Scrooge was actually based on the London miser John Elwes, an 18th-century MP notorious for extreme stinginess.”

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P L E A S E   S U P P O R T   O W A D

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