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When do you think it died out? People have used economical to mean things like affordable or thrifty for a long time.
by scarmig 2y ago
When do you think it died out? People have used economical to mean things like affordable or thrifty for a long time.
- Retric 2y agoBy died out I meant the household aspect is gone, the original meaning included things like paying a carpenter to fix your roof which just seems like an alien use of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus Outside any transaction playing a role in the overall economy. I suspect it shifted with the rise of companies and machinery. So I agree people talk about a ships fuel economy they are referring to efficiency, but the non efficiency aspects of the original definition is absent. Meaning people talking about the economy being good because they got a raise isn’t referring to household budgets but the wider economic system.
- dragonwriter 2y ago"economical" is a different word than "economy", and also "affordable" or "thrifty", while a related concept to either the original sense of "economy" in English from the 15th C or the even older Greek root (the two are different) is not either off those simply transformed from a noun to an adjective without other shift of meaning.