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parsimonious
in a sentence

show 40 more with this conextual meaning
  • Perhaps the adults believed that Shiva, my busy, industrious brother, was naturally parsimonious with his words.†   (source)
  • If there was a grievous flaw in how things were being run, it was the "stupid parsimony" of the Congress.†   (source)
  • Her father, in a moment of brutal honesty, had once said of his only daughter that God had been generous when giving her brains but parsimonious with her looks.†   (source)
  • She began to giggle, for he had gone into a very low-key comedy routine, his accent all of a sudden profoundly and luxuriously Yiddish as he catalogued the bottles and cans and cardboard cartons pouring forth from the bag, his face furrowed in a perfect replica of some elderly harassed, purblind, nervously parsimonious Flatbush storekeeper.†   (source)
  • With an exasperating parsimony he took down the chests, opened them, and placed on the table, one by one, seventy-two gold bricks, Everyone had forgotten about the existence of that fortune.   (source)
  • Ebenezer Scrooge was parsimonious in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
    parsimonious = (having the trait of) extreme reluctance to spend money or use resources
  • They are known for parsimony in their business practices.
  • The suggested cuts in R&D are shortsighted parsimony.
  • He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object.   (source)
    parsimony = reluctance to spend money
  • Profligate squandering was my way of breaking with the panicky, parsimonious ghettos of Flushing.†   (source)
  • They had rescued a wineskin from among the ruins, which Pedro Garcfa divided three ways: a third to wash the injured man's body, a third for Esteban to drink, and the other third he drank parsimoniously himself before beginning to set Esteban's bones, one by one, patiently and calmly, pulling here, adjusting there, putting each one back in its proper place, splinting them, wrapping them in strips of sheet to keep them immobile, mumbling litanies to the healing saints, invoking good luck and the Virgin Mary, and putting up with the screams and blasphemies of Esteban Trueba, without ever altering his beatific blind man's expression.†   (source)
  • Systematically, serenely, in the same parsimonious way in which he had papered the house with banknotes, he then set about smashing the Bohemian crystal ware against the walls, the hand-painted vases, the pictures of maidens in flower-laden boats, the mirrors in their gilded frames, everything that was breakable, from parlor to pantry, and he finished with the large earthen jar in the kitchen, which exploded in the middle of the courtyard with a hollow boom.†   (source)
  • But his sedentary life, which accentuated his cheekbones and concentrated the sparkle of his eyes, did not increase his weight or alter the parsimony of his character, but, on the contrary, it hardened on his lips the straight line of solitary meditation and implacable decision.†   (source)
  • Furious at Jefferson's parsimony, Callender switched sides to become the editor of a new Federalist paper, in Richmond, the Recorder.†   (source)
  • But Joe knew that parsimony had no part in this.†   (source)
  • And of his own friends the eldest son asked but a few of the least considered to the feast, because he was ashamed of his brother's parsimony and because the bride was but a village maid.†   (source)
  • Parsimony might have brought them here in preference to another place, but he knew that it was a desire to depart quickly that had chosen the food.†   (source)
  • Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value?†   (source)
  • "Yes," said I, "how happy you are to have got out of the parsimony of oppression!"†   (source)
  • He carried economy of motion even to parsimony.†   (source)
  • It must, however, be allowed that a democratic State is most parsimonious towards its principal agents.†   (source)
  • If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of—a parsimonious public.†   (source)
  • Mr Barnacle dated from a better time, when the country was not so parsimonious and the Circumlocution Office was not so badgered.†   (source)
  • If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might have become very wealthy—if he had been an attorney in a country town, with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he would have turned them to good account, and might have achieved for himself a very considerable influence and competency.†   (source)
  • Grigory's description of the scene at the dinner-table, when Dmitri had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back to kill him, made a sinister impression on the court, especially as the old servant's composure in telling it, his parsimony of words and peculiar phraseology, were as effective as eloquence.†   (source)
  • He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony.†   (source)
  • As it was, Mr Barnacle, finding his gentlemanly residence extremely inconvenient and extremely dear, always laid it, as a public servant, at the door of the country, and adduced it as another instance of the country's parsimony.†   (source)
  • But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth.†   (source)
  • Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there.†   (source)
  • It is the parsimonious conduct of democracy towards its principal officers which has countenanced a supposition of far more economical propensities than any which it really possesses.†   (source)
  • What with the patrician requirements of Barnacle junior, the three young ladies, Mrs Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself, Mr Tite Barnacle found the intervals between quarter day and quarter day rather longer than he could have desired; a circumstance which he always attributed to the country's parsimony.†   (source)
  • There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.†   (source)
  • ...First crept
    The parsimonious emmet, provident
    Of future;   (source)
    parsimonious = extreme reluctance to use resources (though not in this case, usually it is a question of using money)
  • Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired.†   (source)
  • Pusillanimity, Parsimony, Fear, Diffidence, are Dishonourable.†   (source)
  • The security of all would thus be subjected to the parsimony, improvidence, or inability of a part.†   (source)
  • Pusillanimity, in the same WRETCHEDNESSE, MISERABLENESSE; or PARSIMONY; as it is liked or disliked.†   (source)
  • Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country an†   (source)
  • Jones was going to rebuke him, but the stranger prevented it by proceeding thus: "I had a chum, a very prudent, frugal young lad, who, though he had no very large allowance, had by his parsimony heaped up upwards of forty guineas, which I knew he kept in his escritore.†   (source)
  • Finding, then, that he was unable to resist his propensity, he resolved to divest himself of the instrument and cause of his prodigality and lavishness, to divest himself of wealth, without which Alexander himself would have seemed parsimonious; and so calling us all three aside one day into a room, he addressed us in words somewhat to the following effect: "My sons, to assure you that I love you, no more need be known or said than that you are my sons; and to encourage a suspicion that I do not love you, no more is needed than the knowledge that I have no self-control as far a†   (source)
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