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penny wise and pound foolish

penny wise and pound foolish adjective: prudent and thrifty with small amounts of money, but wasteful with large amounts.

Adjective

penny wise and pound foolish (not generally comparable, comparative more penny wise and pound foolish, superlative most penny wise and pound foolish)

  1. (idiomatic, not comparable, usually) Prudent and thrifty with small amounts of money, but wasteful with large amounts.
    • In the past our government has nowhere been more penny wise and pound foolish than in connection with its expenditures for conservation.1942, Harry Elmer Barnes, Society in Transition: Problems of a Changing Age, page 122

penny wise and pound foolish meaning in Urdu and Thai

penny wise and pound foolish in Urdu

thrifty with small amounts of money but wasteful with large amounts
گانتھ کا پورا عقل کا اندھا gānṭh kā pūrā, 'aqal kā andhā

penny wise and pound foolish in Thai

thrifty with small amounts of money but wasteful with large amounts
เสียน้อยเสียยาก เสียมากเสียง่าย

Forms of penny wise and pound foolish

comparativemore penny wise and pound foolish
superlativemost penny wise and pound foolish
alternative formpenny-wise and pound-foolish
alternative formpenny wise, pound foolish

Origin of penny wise and pound foolish

From the British currency (one penny being one hundredth of a pound or, prior to decimalisation, one 240th of a pound).

Questions about penny wise and pound foolish

What does penny wise and pound foolish mean?
Penny wise and pound foolish means prudent and thrifty with small amounts of money, but wasteful with large amounts.
What is penny wise and pound foolish in Urdu?
Penny wise and pound foolish in Urdu is گانتھ کا پورا عقل کا اندھا (gānṭh kā pūrā, 'aqal kā andhā). See Penny wise and pound foolish meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is penny wise and pound foolish?
Penny wise and pound foolish is an adjective.

Words near penny wise and pound foolish in the dictionary

  1. penny whip
  2. penny whips
  3. penny whistle
  4. penny whistles
  5. penny wisdom
  6. penny wise and pound foolish
  7. penny wise, pound foolish
  8. penny-a-line
  9. penny-a-liner
  10. penny-a-liners
  11. penny-ante

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: penny wise and pound foolish (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-penny wise and pound foolish.ogg.

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