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Word of the Day: Parsimony
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
We have a ten-dollar word today, and that’s US dollars too.
Parsimony is one of those words that can have both positive and negative nuances depending on the context in which it is used.
It can mean to be thrifty. If you shop at discount stores and wear fast fashion, it can be said that you practice parsimony.
If someone asks you for a donation to a charity and you refuse, you are also practicing parsimony.
This time though, the nuance may be that you are cheap or stingy.
We can also use parsimony in discussing the philosophical principle of Occam’s razor, but we are not going to do that today because it’s too hard.
It’s easiest if you think of parsimony as the act of being economical, cheap or stinky. No, not stinky, stingy. Stinky is a typo, but I’ll leave it in because it’s funny.
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In the positive sense, when going through challenging times such as an economic recession or depression, parsimony is beneficial.
Wasting money, food or anything really when trying to survive is an example of stupidity.
That’s why we should respect people and governments who learn to practice parsimony under challenging times.
Now that you know the word, perhaps you should teach it to your local government member.
With the abenomask fiasco, wasting doses of the vaccine due to purchasing the wrong needles, and the gross overspending on the Pandemic Games, the Japanese government has proven to be unfamiliar with the concept of parsimony.
But WE get it.
That’s why the inflation rate can’t hit 2%.
We, the people who live in Japan, have become experts in the art of parsimony.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 64.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.