Pound-foolish

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Being unwise in dealing with large amounts of money.

    "Accordingly, by Dr. Chen's method of calculation, the copayment experience would have to be deemed even more pound-foolish than we found it to be."

Adjective
  1. 1
    unwise in dealing with large sums wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
extravagantincontinentintemperatelavishprodigalprofligate

Example

More examples

"Accordingly, by Dr. Chen's method of calculation, the copayment experience would have to be deemed even more pound-foolish than we found it to be."

Etymology

From penny-wise and pound-foolish (“thrifty in the small and wasteful in the large”).

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