parsimonious

Parsimonious is an adjective meaning characterized by or showing parsimony; frugal or economical in the use of money or resources, often sparing rather than wasteful. The term’s etymology traces to Latin parsimonia meaning frugality, passing into English via Old French as parcimonie or related forms.

In philosophical and scientific contexts, parsimony refers to the principle that, among competing explanations, the simplest one with the fewest assumptions is preferable. Occam’s razor is a well-known formulation of this idea. In statistics and data modeling, a parsimonious model explains the data with the smallest possible number of parameters or assumptions, reducing the risk of overfitting. Model selection criteria such as the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) or Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) reinforce preference for simplicity.

Parsimony also appears in fields such as evolutionary biology and linguistics, where parsimony methods seek the evolutionary history or linguistic changes that minimize the total number of changes.

In everyday language, parsimonious can describe a person who is economical or frugal with money, sometimes with a negative connotation implying stinginess, though it can be used neutrally to denote prudent budgeting or efficient use of resources.

See also: parsimony, Occam’s razor, model selection, overfitting.