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penurious
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Penurious

Penurious \Pe*nu"ri*ous\, a. [From Penury.]

  1. Excessively sparing in the use of money; sordid; stingy; miserly. ``A penurious niggard of his wealth.''
    --Milton.

  2. Not bountiful or liberal; scanty.

    Here creeps along a poor, penurious stream.
    --C. Pitt.

  3. Destitute of money; suffering extreme want. [Obs.] ``My penurious band.''
    --Shak.

    Syn: Avaricious; covetous; parsimonious; miserly; niggardly; stingy. See Avaricious. [1913 Webster]
    -- Pe*nu"ri*ous*ly, adv. -- Pe*nu"ri*ous*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
penurious

1590s, from penury + -ous, or else from Medieval Latin penuriosus, from Latin penuria "penury." Originally "poverty-stricken, in a state of penury;" meaning "stingy" is first attested 1630s. Related: Penuriously.

Wiktionary
penurious

a. 1 miserly; excessively cheap. 2 Not bountiful; thin; scant. 3 impoverished; wanting for money.

WordNet
penurious
  1. adj. not having enough money to pay for necessities [syn: hard up, impecunious, in straitened circumstances(p), penniless, pinched]

  2. excessively unwilling to spend; "parsimonious thrift relieved by few generous impulses"; "lived in a most penurious manner--denying himself every indulgence" [syn: parsimonious]

Usage examples of "penurious".

It carried the roots of evil from France into Scotland, where under a different name it entered into a league with united England, with whom, after having let it in behind the curtain of its secret and having declared deadly war to papism, it cooperates even to the present day, helping out England in her exploits over the whole world with its capital and concessions, in which respect the Sanhedrin was never penurious.

And yet he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet of Dunsloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls.

Often, these lower production costs result in the same problems that Wal-Mart is criticized for in the United States: penurious wages and benefits, cruelly long hours, and poor working conditions.

Somehow the word had gone about the city: "No German can resist a clock," so there came clockmakers, pawnbrokers, burglars and penurious householders, offering bracket clocks, case clocks, porcelain clocks, enameled clocks, even Black Forest cuckoo clocks.

She was the daughter of a Soviet hero - said the priest and a former official of the Red Army who, in the guise of a traitor to Russia, was living in penurious circumstances among counter-revolutionary Czarists in Paris.

Raised in the strict and penurious court of her brother of Cleves, Anne had blossomed—at least in matters of dress and enjoyment of luxury—at the lavish court of Henry VIII.

Soon the jackets disappeared, and they passed under Capricorn in shirt-sleeves: dinner with the Captain, which entailed full uniform, was no longer looked forward to so eagerly, except among the midshipmen, a penurious, hungry crew, whose small supply of private stores, bought at the Cape, had long since been squandered in high living, and who were now growing thin on salt horse and biscuit, no more.

And George Lincoln Stanhope Alexander, who was an heir to both the fortune of the Pennsylvania Alexanders and to the enormous wealth of the Delaware Stanhopes, had absolutely no patience with people who were penurious.