penurious

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Unwilling to spend money; stingy.
2. adj. Yielding little; barren: a penurious land.
3. adj. Poverty-stricken; destitute.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Pertaining to or characterized by penury or want; stricken with poverty; indigent.
2. Niggard; scanty; not bountiful or liberal.
3. Excessively saving or sparing in the use of money; parsimonious to a fault; sordid: as, a penurious man.
4. Nice and dainty.
5. Synonyms Parsimonious, Penurious, Miserly, Close, Niggardly, Stingy, Mean, covetous, avaricious, illiberal, sordid, chary. The first seven words express the spirit or conduct of those who are slow to part with money or other valuable things. Parsimonious is perhaps the most general of these words, literally sparing to spend, but always careful and excessively sparing. Penurious means literally in penury, but always feeling and acting as though one were in poverty, saving beyond reason; the word is rather stronger than parsimonious, and has perhaps rather more reference to the treatment of others. One may be parsimonious or penurious, through habits formed in times of having little, without being really miserly. Miserly, feeling and acting like a miser, is generally applied to one who, having some wealth, clings to it for fear of poverty, or in provision for some possible exigency of the future, or especially for its own sake, as delighting in the mere possession of wealth. Close has the vigor of figurative use; it may be a shortening of close-fisted. Niggardly is the least limited to money, and has the most to do with others; it expresses a meanly parsimonious treatment of others, a neglectful, self-defeating, or stingy saving. Stingy expresses the most of opprobrium: as, Queen Elizabeth was called frugal by her friends, stingy by her enemies, and parsimonious by the rest of the world. It indicates a grudging, narrow-hearted or unreasonable parsimony in giving or providing. Mean shows a tendency toward emphasizing the idea of a close or narrow and mean-spirited handling of money. See avarice.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Miserly; excessively cheap.
2. adj. Not bountiful; thin; scant.
3. adj. Impoverished; wanting for money.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Excessively sparing in the use of money; sordid; stingy; miserly.
2. adj. Not bountiful or liberal; scanty.
3. adj. obsolete Destitute of money; suffering extreme want.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. not having enough money to pay for necessities
2. adj. excessively unwilling to spend