frugality

Borrowed from Middle French frugalité.

• IPA^(key): /fɹuːˈɡæləti/

frugality (countable and uncountable, plural frugalities)

1. The quality of being frugal; prudent economy; thrift.
   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 47:

     Your sense of honour and honesty would have led you, I know, when aware of your situation, to attempt all the economy that would appear to you possible; and, perhaps, as long as your frugality retrenched only on your own comfort, you might have been suffered to practice it, but beyond that—

   • 1902, Barbara Baynton, Sally Krimmer; Alan Lawson, editors, Bush Studies (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 14:

     With the frugality that hard graft begets, his mate limited both his and her own tobacco, so he must not smoke all afternoon.

2. A sparing use; sparingness.

• frugalness (less common variant)
• parsimony
• thriftiness

• “frugality”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• frugality in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913