Word.ws English Dictionary

false economy

false economy noun: an attempt to economize that fails because the less expensive approach is inferior in some way, or ultimately wastes more money than was saved.

Noun

false economy (countable and uncountable, plural false economies)

  1. An attempt to economize that fails because the less expensive approach is inferior in some way, or ultimately wastes more money than was saved.
    • On the other hand, when money is saved and the efficiency of the school is injured, that is a false economy.1943, Ward Glen Reeder, A First Course in Education
    • "If the suggestion is merely to delay the opening of Euston, then you may save some money in the very short term. But by delaying works, allowing more inflation to creep in, you will actually add to the overall cost. It would be a totally false economy."2023 February 8, Paul Stephen, “Network News: Hunt dismisses rumours that HS2 will not go to Euston”, in RAIL, number 976, page 25

Forms of false economy

pluralfalse economies

Questions about false economy

What does false economy mean?
False economy means an attempt to economize that fails because the less expensive approach is inferior in some way, or ultimately wastes more money than was saved.
What part of speech is false economy?
False economy is a noun.
What is the plural of false economy?
The plural of false economy is false economies.

Words near false economy in the dictionary

  1. false drop
  2. false drops
  3. false easting
  4. false eastings
  5. false economies
  6. false economy
  7. false equivalence
  8. false equivalences
  9. false eyelash
  10. false eyelashes
  11. false face

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false economy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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