MacGyver was very resourceful: give him a wad of chewing gum and a few paper clips, and in a pinch he could improvise the Large Hadron Collider. Likewise, the professor on Gilligan's Island: with a couple of coconut shells, turtle droppings and a shoe lace, he could cobble together a short-wave radio. Handymen are naturally resourceful — it's what makes them handy. If there's a job to be done, and they don't have the proper materials to do it, they work with what they've got. They patch things up. They splice, modify and invent. And, of course, they lean heavily on duct tape.Resourceful has a range of meanings. The most common one, however, is ingenious, inventive under pressure, possessing the imaginative power to overcome a lack of (proper) resources. In a nutshell, you have to be resourceful when you don't have resources. It's not a choice in that circumstance — hence the proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention.”