| economy | n.; pl. Economies [ F. économie, L. oeconomia household management, fr. Gr. o'ikonomi`a, fr. o'ikono`mos one managing a household; o'i^kos house (akin to L. vicus village, E. vicinity) + no`mos usage, law, rule, fr. ne`mein to distribute, manage. See Vicinity, Nomad. ] 1. The management of domestic affairs; the regulation and government of household matters; especially as they concern expense or disbursement; as, a careful economy. [ 1913 Webster ] Himself busy in charge of the household economies. Froude. [ 1913 Webster ] 2. Orderly arrangement and management of the internal affairs of a state or of any establishment kept up by production and consumption; esp., such management as directly concerns wealth; as, political economy. [ 1913 Webster ] 3. The system of rules and regulations by which anything is managed; orderly system of regulating the distribution and uses of parts, conceived as the result of wise and economical adaptation in the author, whether human or divine; as, the animal or vegetable economy; the economy of a poem; the Jewish economy. [ 1913 Webster ] The position which they [ the verb and adjective ] hold in the general economy of language. Earle. [ 1913 Webster ] In the Greek poets, as also in Plautus, we shall see the economy . . . of poems better observed than in Terence. B. Jonson. [ 1913 Webster ] The Jews already had a Sabbath, which, as citizens and subjects of that economy, they were obliged to keep. Paley. [ 1913 Webster ] 4. Thrifty and frugal housekeeping; management without loss or waste; frugality in expenditure; prudence and disposition to save; as, a housekeeper accustomed to economy but not to parsimony. [ 1913 Webster ]
Political economy. See under Political.
Syn. -- Economy, Frugality, Parsimony. Economy avoids all waste and extravagance, and applies money to the best advantage; frugality cuts off indulgences, and proceeds on a system of saving. The latter conveys the idea of not using or spending superfluously, and is opposed to lavishness or profusion. Frugality is usually applied to matters of consumption, and commonly points to simplicity of manners; parsimony is frugality carried to an extreme, involving meanness of spirit, and a sordid mode of living. Economy is a virtue, and parsimony a vice. [ 1913 Webster ] I have no other notion of economy than that it is the parent to liberty and ease. Swift. [ 1913 Webster ] The father was more given to frugality, and the son to riotousness [ luxuriousness ]. Golding. [ 1913 Webster ] |
