Penny-pinching

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    reluctance to spend money; thrift or parsimony; extreme economy. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    extreme care in spending money; reluctance to spend money unnecessarily wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    reluctant to spend money; close-fisted

    "If there is an overall lesson, it is that train quality should be seen as part of the battle against climate change, with penny-pinching specifications robustly opposed as a false economy."

Adjective
  1. 1
    giving or spending with reluctance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
abstemiousavariceavariciouscannycheapcheeseparing

Example

More examples

"My neighbor is a penny-pinching old miser who won't even give you the time of day."

Etymology

From pinchpenny.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.