E-cŏn'ō-my, n.

n. [Fr. économie, Lat. œconomia, Gr. οἰκονομία, from οἰκονομεῖν, to be an οἰκονόμος, managing a household, from οἶκος, house, and νόμος, usage, law, rule, from νέμειν, to distribute, manage.]

1Sense 1. The management of domestic affairs; the regulation and government of household matters, especially as they concern expense or disbursement; as, a careful economy. “Their economy was sincere.” Bp. Taylor.

2Sense 2. The internal, and especially the pecuniary, management of any undertaking, corporation, state, or the like; as, political economy.

3Sense 3. The system of rules and regulations by which any thing is managed; orderly system, 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.

In the Greek poets, we see the economy . . . of poems better observed than in Terence. B. Jonson.

The Jews already had a Sabbath, which, as citizens and subjects of that economy, they were obliged to keep, and did keep. Paley.

4Sense 4. Thrifty and frugal housekeeping; management without loss or waste; frugality in expenditure; prudence and disposition to save. “A just economy and splendid at home.” Hughes.

Synonyms— ECONOMY, FRUGALITY, PARSIMONY. Economy avoids all waste and extravagance, and applies money to the best advantage; frugality cuts off all indulgences, and proceeds on a system of rigid and habitual saving; 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. Frugality may lean to the one or the other, according to the motives from which it springs. “I have no other notion of economy than that it is the parent to liberty and ease.” Swift. “The boundaries of virtues are indivisible lines: it is impossible to march up close to the frontiers of frugality, without entering the territories of parsimony.” Arbuthnot.