Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Prudent and thrifty in management; not wasteful or extravagant. See Synonyms at sparing.
- adj. Intended to save money, as by efficient operation or elimination of unnecessary features; economic: an economical heating system; an economical approach to control of corporate growth.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as economic. The form economical is more common than economic in sense 5.
Wiktionary
- adj. Careful with money so as not to spend too much; prudent; thrifty.
- adj. Relating to economy in any other sense.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to an economy, the system of production and management of material wealth
- adj. using the minimum of time or resources necessary for effectiveness
- adj. avoiding waste
Etymologies
- From economic + -al (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Customers identify and validate the requirements to be addressed and evaluate the contractor's performance, and ensure that the contract is used in economical and efficient ways.”
The Huffington Post: David Isenberg: This Waste Really Hurts
“That being said, hotels doors in economical hotels usually leave something to be desired in security.”
“They have more specialized uses and are often more difficult to extract in economical quantities than base metals like copper, tin and lead.”
“The most successful transition was made by journalists like Ben Hecht and Robert Benchley, who were accustomed to deadlines and copy editors and writing for an anonymous public that liked its information meted out in economical and dramatic doses … Journalists shared with veteran screenwriters a tendency to think of their work more as a craft than as an art.”
“They rely heavily on people from a certain economical and social disadvantage, to fill their ranks.”
“Perhaps, but only because history shows us that corporate greed causes most companies to miss the long term economical gains over a short term loss of licensing revenues.”
10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed
“On one side, we have a long and rich heritage of ethnical music which is a vast ocean of wealth that can not be damaged hopefully by this practice which is clearly motivated only by 'street recognition' and the short-term economical effect.”
“Not only is it obsolete in economical terms but it's obsolete also in physical terms.”
“Whence two systems of morals arise, not antagonistic but concurrent; religious or philosophical morality, and the morality to which I permit myself to apply the name economical”
“Without the word economical, this is a physics challenge that we know how to meet: to convert energy from photons to a flow of electrons.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘economical’.
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CONT - general terms
additionality, audit trail, accounting standards, auditing standards, general audit obj..., a posteriori audit, a priori audit, above board, acceptable error ..., access rights, accountability, accountable entities and 1283 more...
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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EU Buzz - single words (1+2+3)
1. Strictly EU terms with special European meaning used only in the EU
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2. Keywords central to the understanding of the EU (people working for the EU are usually able to give thematic...acceleration, action, additionality, administrator, agenda, agricultural, agri-environmental, agriflation, agri-food, applicant, approach, assent and 1325 more...
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cricket
everything cricket
backlift, bail, batsman, batsmen, batswoman, batswomen, beamer, blockhole, bodyline, bosie, bouncer, boundary and 471 more...
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magoosh gre
chums, pernicious, spurious, fleeting, pedestrian, recuse, urbane, indecorous, sophisticated, decry, heartfelt, deterred and 46 more...
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SAT Vocabulary
243 SAT Vocabulary words, courtesy of Excel Test Prep, Inc.
adorn, aeon, affectation, aloof, amalgam, ambivalent, anguish, antecedent, apathy, aplomb, appall, apropos and 64 more...
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cost
price
affordable, low-cost, surprisingly affo..., ridiculously low, economical, pocket-friendly, dirt-cheap, won't cost you th..., won't burn your p..., shockingly low, never before price, all time lowest r... and 11 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for economical.

kewpid As a proportion of the total economy it is not that big, though it's certainly been on the ascendancy over the past 30 years. Nov 2, 2007
john Depressing indeed--and that's just the annual deficit Feynman was talking about. Our actual debt is on the order of $9 *trillion* dollars. Nov 2, 2007
uselessness That is very depressing, seanahan. When the deficit is worded that way it sounds very big, indeed. Nov 2, 2007
kewpid That's something to think about!
There's an estimated 1080 atoms, so there is a physical limit to the amount of information that can exist – in this universe at least. Nov 2, 2007
seanahan There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman Nov 2, 2007