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English isn't stingy when it comes to synonyms of parsimonious. Stingy, close, penurious, and miserly are a few terms that, like parsimonious, suggest an unwillingness to share with others. Stingy implies a marked lack of generosity, whereas close suggests keeping a tight grip on one's money and possessions. Penurious implies frugality that gives an appearance of actual poverty, and miserly suggests avariciousness and a morbid pleasure in hoarding. Parsimonious usually suggests an extreme frugality that borders on stinginess.
Examples of parsimonious in a Sentence
William J. Bennett, The Death of Outrage, 1998
Their merchant princes were supposed to be parsimonious and austere: fustian in apparel and coarse in diet.
—Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 1988
With saints, Dante is apathetic. They are written with a dry pen, and parsimonious vision.
—Robert Lowell, Collected Prose, 1987
a parsimonious woman who insists that charity begins—and ends—at home
Oliver Kay, The Athletic, 19 Mar. 2025
His father was intensely parsimonious as well, and once tried to build a front fence by hammering bookshelves together.
—Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2025
To attribute the corrosion of institutional trust to such bugbears as relativism or postmodernism is to ignore explanations that are both more concrete and more parsimonious.
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2025
In a perfect and parsimonious world, a single two-stage spacecraft would land on Mars, scoop up soil samples in situ, and transfer them to an ascent stage which would blast off into orbit.
—Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 13 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for parsimonious
Cite this Entry
“Parsimonious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parsimonious. Accessed 31 Mar. 2025.
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