parsimonious

English

WOTD – 15 December 2015

Etymology

From parsimony +‎ -ious.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pɑː.sɪˈməʊ.ni.əs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

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

Adjective

parsimonious (comparative more parsimonious, superlative most parsimonious)

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

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

   • 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:

     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, →PMID, →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.
   • 2015 May 25, Daniel Taylor, “Norwich reach Premier League after early blitz sees off Middlesbrough”, in The Guardian‎^[1], London, archived from the original on 26 May 2015:

     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.

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, skoupý (cs), škudlivý, skrblivý
• Dutch: zuinig (nl), gierig (nl)
• Estonian: säästlik, kokkuhoidlik, majanduslik
• Finnish: kitsas (fi), pihi (fi)
• French: pincé (fr), avare (fr), parcimonieux (fr)
• German: sparsam (de), geizig (de), karg (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient: φειδωλός (pheidōlós)

• 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

• Estonian: säästlik
• Spanish: parsimonioso (es)

(sport) not conceding many goals

Further reading

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