parsimonious
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /pɑː.sɪˈməʊ.ni.əs/
ipa: /pɑɹ.sɪˈmoʊ.ni.əs/
rhymes: -əʊniəs
Forms: form: more parsimonious
form: most parsimonious
Etymology: From parsimony + -ious.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 68:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: The first three college-savings plans stand out for their parsimonious expenses […]
ref: 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:
synonyms: word: penurious
word: thrifty
word: stingy
word: pennywise
word: tight-fisted
word: abstemious
word: canny
word: chary
word: cheap
word: close with a buck
word: economical
word: frugal
word: husbandly
word: huswifely
word: parsimonious
word: penny-pinching
word: prudent
word: spareful
word: sparing
word: spary
word: thrifty
word: tight
word: tightwad
word: as tight as Dick's hatband
word: cheap
word: cheeseparing
word: chintzy
word: close
word: close as wax
word: close-fisted
word: illiberal
word: mean
word: miserable
word: miserly
word: narrow-fisted
word: niggardly
word: nipcheese
word: parsimonious
word: peddling
word: penny-wise
word: penny-pinching
word: penurious
word: scrooge-like
word: scrubby
word: shabby
word: still got one's communion money
word: stingy
word: swear
word: tight
word: tight-fisted
word: tight as a tick
word: tighter than Dick's hatband
word: ungenerous
word: ungiving
glosses: Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in the expenditure of money; frugal, possibly to excess.
examples: text: Statistical methods offer the ability to enforce parsimonious selection of the most influential potential predictors of each gene's state.
ref: 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, →PMID, →PMCID, page R36:
glosses: Using a minimal number of assumptions, steps, or conjectures.
examples: text: They played like a team that was in a hurry to get back to the Premier League. Norwich City had dismantled the most parsimonious defence in the Championship inside the opening quarter of an hour and at the final whistle it was the yellow end, rather than Middlesbrough’s banks of red, where the euphoria could be found.
ref: 2015 May 25, Daniel Taylor, “Norwich reach Premier League after early blitz sees off Middlesbrough”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 26 May 2015:
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: Not conceding many goals.
Derived terms: equiparsimonious
imparsimonious
nonparsimonious
parsimoniously
parsimoniousness
unparsimonious
unparsimoniously