This week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

This week’s words
piacular
demotic
parsimony
gaucherie
valence

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PAR-si-mo-nee)

MEANING:

noun: Excessive frugality; stinginess.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin parsimonia, from parcere (to spare). Earliest documented use: 1475.

USAGE:

“In what is by now a grand American tradition, Thoreau justified his own parsimony by impugning the needy. ‘Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it.’”
Kathryn Schulz; Pond Scum; The New Yorker; Oct 19, 2015.

See more usage examples of parsimony in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: