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Some dictionaries seems to include the word "thrift" at the end of definition for oikonomia (good examples here and here):

Greek oikonomia "household management, thrift.

I would like to know the source of this meaning, as it seems that oikonomos is directly understood as only household management.

When and how did a word economy started to mean a thrift household management?

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  • Can we know this meaning is not a later influence of its meaning in another language? E.g. that it first got it from English (or Latin), and was then adopted by modern Greek as a meaning? I bet this is what happened in Spanish, where the word economia can also means thrift. – luchonacho Aug 8 at 18:47
  • @luchonacho Good thought, but LSJ also includes "thrift", citing several classical authors. – Draconis Aug 8 at 19:21
  • How? I think the semantic shift is pretty obvious. – Alex B. Aug 9 at 15:03
  • 1
    @Draconis. It might be useful, if anyone has the time, to look up the references in LSJ and determine whether any of them really requires the meaning "thrifty house-keeping". – fdb Aug 10 at 13:55
  • The correct term would be a metonymic (semantic) change or shift. While it’s very easy to envision such a change, I’m not entirely sure if it happened in Ancient Greek. Let’s look at some examples. – Alex B. Aug 10 at 14:31

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