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- DictionaryPenny wise and pound foolish
- ▪ careful and economical in small matters while being wasteful or extravagant in large ones
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The meaning of PENNY-WISE AND/BUT POUND-FOOLISH is careful about small amounts of money but not about large amounts —used especially to describe something that is done to save a small amount of money now but that will cost a large amount of money in the future. How to use penny-wise and/but pound-foolish in a sentence.
BE PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH definition: 1. to be extremely careful about small amounts of money and not careful enough about larger amounts…. Learn more.
The English idiom “penny wise and pound foolish” is a popular saying that warns against safeguarding pennies while risking pounds. In other words, being stingy with small sums of money while being extravagant with larger sums.
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Penny wise and pound foolish'? Careful with one’s spending of small sums of money but careless and wasteful with larger amounts.
penny-wise and pound-foolish. So concerned with saving money in any way possible that one fails to allocate money to things that will ultimately force one to spend more (due to lack of quality, proper maintenance, etc.).
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Someone who is penny wise, pound foolish can be very careful or mean with small amounts of money, yet wasteful and extravagant with large sums.
This phrase alludes to British currency, in which a pound was once worth 240 pennies, or pence, and is now worth 100 pence. The phrase is also occasionally used for being very careful about unimportant matters and careless about important ones.
penny-wise and pound-foolish. [mainly British, old-fashioned] careful in small matters but careless in more important ones. If we had auditors to go out and check on this, we would have saved billions of dollars. In other words, we have been penny-wise and pound-foolish here. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary.
The phrase “penny wise and pound foolish” is a popular idiom that has been used for centuries to describe people who are overly concerned with small savings but end up wasting large amounts of money in the long run.
BE PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH meaning: 1. to be extremely careful about small amounts of money and not careful enough about larger amounts…. Learn more.
