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penurious

Don't have two nickels to rub together? You're penurious — a lovely long way of saying you're flat broke.

Penurious also means a general dislike of spending money. If someone accuses you of being cheap, tell them you prefer to be thought of as penurious. It sounds so much classier. It's related to a similar word, penury, which means "a state of extreme poverty."

DEFINITIONS OF: penurious

1

adj excessively unwilling to spend

“lived in a most penurious manner--denying himself every indulgence”
Synonyms:
parsimonious
stingy, ungenerous
unwilling to spend

adj not having enough money to pay for necessities

Synonyms:
hard up, impecunious, in straitened circumstances, penniless, pinched
poor
having little money or few possessions
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