Word of the Day

: November 30, 2024

frugal

adjective FROO-gul

What It Means

Someone described as frugal is careful about spending money or using things unnecessarily. Frugal can also describe something that is simple and plain in a way that reflects such carefulness with money and resources.

// By being frugal and limiting unnecessary purchases, the family is able to stretch its monthly budget.

// Sometimes a frugal meal of bread, cheese, and grapes can be just as satisfying as a lavish feast.

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frugal in Context

“‘I would take anything that I had and put it into a pan and just fry it up, and then eat it with a fork out of the pan, because it would also cut down on the minimum amount of dishes for me to have to clean,’ he [Kevin Bacon] recalls of some of his early egg-onion-leftover-pasta concoctions. And though his frugal days are behind him, the star still prefers cooking over fancy restaurant meals most of the time.” — Clarissa Cruz, People, 9 Nov. 2023

Did You Know?

Folks who are frugal tend to frown on the frivolous frittering away of the fruits of their labor, so it may surprise you to learn that frugal comes from the Latin word frūx, which means, among other things, “fruit.” Perhaps because of fruit’s financial value, from frūx followed frūgī, an adjective meaning “deserving, sober, or thrifty,” which finagled its way into Late Latin in the form of frūgālis (“not given to excess; temperate, sober, simple”), then Middle French, and finally English, as the familiar frugal. Today, frugal is used to describe things that reflect a fastidious dedication to foregoing the fancy, as in “he insists on a frugal diet of fungi and fava beans.” Frugal can also describe a person, usually with respect to money, but one can be frugal with other things, too, such as words that start with the letter f, though we certainly haven’t been in this paragraph.