Etymology

penurious

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Today it means: Miserly; excessively cheap. Full definition →

Medieval Latin pēnūriōsus
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The story

  1. Medieval Latin · derived frompēnūriōsus
  2. English todaypenurious

From Medieval Latin pēnūriōsus. See penury from Latin penuria (“want”), related to paene (“scarcely”), c. 1400. Compare French pénurie.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.