thrift

UK/ˈθɹɪft/US/ˈθɹɪft/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,098 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: thrifts

Thrift is careful management of money so that none is wasted. Practise thrift, a habit of thrift, wartime thrift.

It is approving where mean is not, and the difference is that thrift is about waste rather than about generosity. A thrift shop in America is what Britain calls a charity shop, and thrift is also the name of a small pink cliff flower.

Definitions of thrift

1nounthriftCareful management of money so that none is wasted.B2+
“Through thrift and hard work, they saved enough to buy a small farm.”

thrift is a carefulness.

Where it comes from

Old Norse thrift means a thriving condition, from the same root as thrive.

Proto-Indo-European
*terp-
Old Norse
þrift — thriving condition, prosperity
Middle English
thrift
English, today
thrift

From Middle English thrift, thryfte, þrift, from Old Norse þrift (“thriving condition, prosperity”). Equivalent to thrive + t.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

thrift in the wild

The total cost of taxpayers by the end of 1999 was $123.8 billion with an additional $29.1 billion of losses imposed onto the thrift industry.
Savings and loan crisis
At that time, thrifts had issued long-term loans at fixed interest rates that were lower than prevailing deposit rates.
Savings and loan crisis
The paradox of thrift (or paradox of saving) is a paradox of economics.
Paradox of thrift
The paradox of thrift is an example of the fallacy of composition, the idea that what is true of the parts must always be true of the whole.
Paradox of thrift
Armeria maritima, the thrift, sea thrift or sea pink, is a species of flowering plant in the family Plumbaginaceae.
Armeria maritima

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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.

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