penurious
/pəˈnjʊə.ɹi.əs/
"penurious" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“penurious” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Miserly; excessively cheap.
Corpus desk
Index EN-penurious · penurious · English
penurious · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | penurious |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /pəˈnjʊə.ɹi.əs/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “penurious” in English
Rare enough to double-check
penurious is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /pəˈnjʊə.ɹi.əs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for penurious in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Medieval Latin pēnūriōsus. See penury from Latin penuria (“want”), related to paene (“scarcely”), c. 1400. Compare French pénurie. The correct English form is penurious, spelled P-E-N-U-R-I-O-U-S.
Definition
- 1Miserly; excessively cheap.
- 2Not bountiful; thin; scant.
- 3Impoverished; wanting for money.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how penurious appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The old man died a penurious wretch; eighty-thousand dollars in the mattress and as many holes in the roof.
The penurious stew would have been more accurately labelled broth.
Etymology
From Medieval Latin pēnūriōsus. See penury from Latin penuria (“want”), related to paene (“scarcely”), c. 1400. Compare French pénurie.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.