parsimony

UK/ˈpɑːsɪməni/US/ˈpɑɹsəˌmoʊni/

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — parsimonious sits at #15,130Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Parsimony is great meanness with money or with words. Notorious parsimony.

In science it is a virtue, meaning the simplest explanation that fits the evidence. Parsimony about money is a fault and parsimony about assumptions is a discipline.

Definitions of parsimony

1nounparsimonyGreat meanness with money or with words.C2
“His parsimony with praise was legendary in the department.”

parsimony is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin parsimonia, from parcere, to spare; the scientific sense comes from a medieval principle of not multiplying entities.

Proto-Indo-European
*h₂erk-
Middle English
parcimonie
English, today
parsimony

Built from

parcimony · Middle English — economy, frugality, thrift
parsimōnia · Latin — frugality, thrift, parsimony; moderation, restraint; stinginess
parcō · Latin — to economize, save up; etc.
*h₂erk- · Proto-Indo-European — to hold; to guard, protect; to lock

From Middle English parcimonie. From Late Middle English parcimonie, parcimony (“economy, frugality, thrift”), borrowed from Latin parcimōnia, parsimōnia (“frugality, thrift, parsimony; moderation, restraint; stinginess”), from pars- (the of parcō (“to economize, save up; etc.”)) + -mōnia. The further etymology of parcō is uncertain; it is possibly from Proto-Indo-European h₂epó (“away; off”) + h₂erk- (“to hold; to guard, protect; to lock”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

parsimony in the wild

In evolutionary biology, maximum parsimony is a method used to build phylogenetic trees based on the principle of simplicity.
Maximum parsimony
Under the maximum-parsimony criterion, the best tree will minimize the amount of homoplasy (i.e., convergent evolution, parallel evolution, and evolutionary reversals).
Maximum parsimony
Although often viewed as a failing of parsimony-based methodology, LBA could in principle result from a variety of scenarios and be inferred under multiple analytical paradigms.
Long branch attraction
Maximum likelihood, parsimony, Bayesian, and minimum evolution are typical optimality criteria used to assess how well a phylogenetic tree topology describes the sequence data.
Computational phylogenetics
Methods (implemented by each program) that are available in the package include parsimony, distance matrix, and likelihood methods, including bootstrapping and consensus trees.
PHYLIP

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the parcō family

parsimonious

parsimony — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

← Vocabulary