n., pl., -mies.
- Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor: learned to practice economy in making out the household budget.
- An example or result of such management; a saving.
- The system or range of economic activity in a country, region, or community: Effects of inflation were felt at every level of the economy.
- A specific type of economic system: an industrial economy; a planned economy.
- An orderly, functional arrangement of parts; an organized system: "the sense that there is a moral economy in the world, that good is rewarded and evil is punished" (George F. Will).
- Efficient, sparing, or conservative use: wrote with an economy of language.
- The least expensive class of accommodations, especially on an airplane.
- Theology. The method of God's government of and activity within the world.
Economical or inexpensive to buy or use: an economy car; an economy motel.
[Middle English yconomye, management of a household, from Latin oeconomia, from Greek oikonomiā, from oikonomos, manager of a household : oikos, house + nemein, to allot, manage.]
WORD HISTORY Managing an economy has at least an etymological justification. The word economy can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomos, "one who manages a household," derived from oikos, "house," and nemein, "to manage." From oikonomos was derived oikonomiā, which had not only the sense "management of a household or family" but also senses such as "thrift," "direction," "administration," "arrangement," and "public revenue of a state." The first recorded sense of our word economy, found in a work possibly composed in 1440, is "the management of economic affairs," in this case, of a monastery. Economy is later recorded in other senses shared by oikonomiā in Greek, including "thrift" and "administration." What is probably our most frequently used current sense, "the economic system of a country or an area," seems not to have developed until the 19th or 20th century.
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