David Zapatka
While at dinner with friends following a sectional bridge tournament in Fountain Hills, a friend, Susan, described herself as a parsimonious person despite the new $2,000 purse she was showing us.
Parsimonious—par·si·mo·ni·ous adjective 1. exhibiting or marked by parsimony; frugal to the point of stinginess 2. sparing, restrained
Parsimony—par·si·mo·ny noun 1a. the quality of being careful with money or resources; thrift 1b. the quality or state of being stingy 2. economy in the use of means to an end especially economy of explanation in conformity with Occam’s razor
Origin and Etymology—Middle English parcimony, borrowed from Latin parsimōnia, from pars-, perfect stem of parcere “to act sparingly, be thrifty (with), refrain from” (of uncertain origin) + -i- + -mōnia, suffix of abstract nouns (going back to the Indo-European noun-forming suffix -men/mon- + the abstract noun formative -i-)
First Known Use—1598
Occam’s razor is a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities. Occam’s razor was spoken of in The Big Bang episode, “The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization.”
William of Occam didn’t invent the rule associated with his name. Others had espoused the “keep it simple” concept before that 14th-century philosopher and theologian embraced it, but no one wielded the principle (also known as the “law of parsimony“) as relentlessly as he did. He used it to counter what he considered the fuzzy logic of his theological contemporaries, and his applications of it inspired 19th-century Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton to link Occam with the idea of cutting away extraneous material, giving us the modern name for the principle.
Parsimonious used in a sentence:
A parsimonious woman insists that charity begins—and ends—at home.
Her parsimony was so extreme that she’d walk five miles to the store to save a few cents on gas.
That conclusion will not appeal to seekers of parsimony, but it is no more complex and messy than the actual world around us.
Parsimonious used on the web:
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
To articulate its outlines sufficiently is, almost by definition, to spill past time, to run counter to the withholding, parsimonious control that has characterized the Obamas all along.—Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2024
There is a parsimonious version of the defense of free speech that holds that the only thing that Americans should worry about is infringement by the state.—Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 10 Feb. 2022
Please submit your parsimonious experiences with friends or by yourself or any word you may like to share along with your insights and comments to [email protected].