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Frugal Has Surprising Roots
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.
Examples of frugal in a Sentence
Johanna McGeary, Time, 25 Oct. 2004
Like frugal cooks everywhere, Cajun cooks from generations past found plenty of ways to use every part of the animals they raised.
—Jeremy Sauer, Cook's Country, June 1995
In a frugal white frame house of tiny rooms that shook with every passing freight train, five boys of German immigrant background had grown up at the turn of the twentieth century.
—Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness, 1988
a frugal meal of bread and cheese
by being frugal, the family is able to stretch its monthly budget
Owen Clarke, Outside Online, 28 Jan. 2025
Like Schwarzenegger before the Great Recession, but unlike frugal Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom has not prepared the state fiscally to cope with emergencies.
—John Seiler, Orange County Register, 17 Jan. 2025
In a video being shared online, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged Brazilians to be frugal when grocery shopping.
—Louis Casiano, Fox News, 7 Feb. 2025
Another reader offered a potential solution, but the original poster said that wouldn’t work based on his family’s history of not being frugal.
—Brian Anthony Hernandez, People.com, 2 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Frugal.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frugal. Accessed 9 Mar. 2025.
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