Another word I haven't seen for quite a while:

"'I conquered 'em, spectacularly,' goes on King Shane, 'and then I went at 'em with economical politics, law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New England ethics and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can guess at it, I preach to 'em in the council-house (I'm the council) on the law of supply and demand. I praise supply and knock
demand. I use the same text every time. You wouldn't think, W. D.,' says Shane, 'that I had poetry in me, would you?'"

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Par"si*mo*ny\, n. [L. parsimonia, parcimonia; cf.
parcere to spare, parsus sparing: cf. F. parcimonie.]
Closeness or sparingness in the expenditure of money; --
generally in a bad sense; excessive frugality; niggardliness.
--Bacon.

Yes, I do like parsimony and, even better, parsimonious, which is great fun to say and doesn't have anything to do, I suppose, with parsnips and parsley.

Cross-thread ref: jheem just pointed out that there's a linguistic connection among such words as souse, salt and salad. I don't suppose parsley slides in there, too? Probably not, but I'm just wondering.

Dear WW: If a parson committed simony, would that make him guilty of parsimony?

That'd be neat, but parsley is from ME persley from OE petersilie from VL petrosilium from Greek petros 'stone' plus selinon 'celery'.

Stone celery? Why 'stone'? How interesting. But why 'stone'? Certainly nothing to do with rocks?

Not sure. I'll look into it further. Could be a folk etymology redo of some loanword into Greek.