Adjective: penny wise and pound foolish
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more penny wise and pound foolish |
| Superlative | most penny wise and pound foolish |
Sample Sentences
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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:]
Adjectives inflected like penny wise and pound foolish
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From the British currency (one penny being one hundredth of a pound or, prior to decimalisation, one 240th of a pound).