economy

The general sense of economy is careful management of resources such as money and materials, so as not to waste them, but the more familiar reference is to a system of producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services.

The word economy derives from Greek oikonomos "manager of a household," from oikos "house." The earliest meaning of the adjective economical and the noun economics was also in connection with the management of a household. The earliest mention of a nation's economy was in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, an important work in the history of political economy.