économes

Économes is a form that can appear in French texts with different, related meanings depending on context and spelling. In contemporary standard French, the most common and correct term for people who study or practice the profession of economics is économistes (plural of économiste). The sequence économe/economes is often encountered in older or literary uses describing thrifty or prudent individuals, where the root relates to economy in the sense of careful management of resources. In such cases, the plural économes is the ordinary plural for that noun in modern French, though exact spellings can vary in historical texts.

Etymology and relation to other terms help clarify usage. The word economy itself comes from the Greek oikonomía, via Latin oeconomia, and it gave rise to the nouns and adjectives in French connected to thrift, management, and the discipline of economics. The adjective économe or the noun économe historically signified thrift or prudent management, and by extension could describe people who embody those traits. The modern, institutional sense of economics as a field is expressed with économie/économie and the profession of the economist as économiste.

Usage notes. Économes, when used as a plural of the frugal-person noun, is relatively rare in everyday modern French and tends to appear in historical or literary contexts. For contemporary reference to the profession, economists should be called économistes. The terms are related but belong to different registers and meanings, with économie as the broader concept of the economy and the science behind it.

See also: économie, économiste, économie domestique.