Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A stingy, grasping person; a miser.
- adjective Stingy; miserly.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A stingy or close-fisted person; a parsimonious or avaricious person; one who stints, or supplies sparingly; a miser.
- noun A false bottom in a grate, used for saving fuel. Also
nigger . - Sparing; stinting; parsimonious.
- To stint; supply sparingly.
- To be parsimonious or niggardly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A person meanly stingy and covetous; one who spends grudgingly; a stingy, parsimonious fellow; a miser.
- adjective Like a niggard; meanly covetous or parsimonious; niggardly; miserly; stingy.
- verb rare To act the niggard toward; to be niggardly.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Sparing ;stinting ;parsimonious . - adjective
Miserly orstingy . - noun A
miser orstingy person; askinflint . - noun A false bottom in a grate, used for saving fuel.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a selfish person who is unwilling to give or spend
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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The Highland soldier, far from his country, is accompanied by this holy love, this inexhaustible stimulus to exertion, which induces him to save with what may be unjustly called a niggard hand his earnings, to support, in their old age, those who have given him birth.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume I. Mrs. Thomson
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The niggard is a thief; he steals from himself in not allowing himself what is needful.
The Ten Commandments 1692
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Could poor Robert have kept his children in their old habits of living, he might have reserved some of the profits arising from his works, but he loved his children too tenderly to be a niggard; and, besides, he received his profits at a time when bread was six or seven shillings per stone: no wonder that with a sickly family to sup port, he was embarrassed.
Letter 413 2009
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A weary journey beyond the last scrub timber and straggling copses, into the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to deny the
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Through the centuries niggard of it, like the aloe with its bud;
City and Village 2010
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We cannot be niggard with Kahekili and cut his allotment of sacrifice in half. '
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On account that people (including blacks) are inclined to confuse “niggard” with a similar word which is a racial slur.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Public Opinion, Anti-Discrimination Law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 2010
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The thatch of hair, dust-coloured, straight and sparse, advertised the niggard soil, as did the nose, thin, delicately modelled, and just hinting the suggestion of a beak.
The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii:The House of Pride 2010
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On account that people including blacks are inclined to confuse “niggard” with a similar word which is a racial slur.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Public Opinion, Anti-Discrimination Law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 2010
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All he seemed able to do, though, was recall his father's castle, hawks nesting in the bell tower, himself about to ride forth on one of the horses they still used at home but pausing to look down the mountainside, fells and woods and the peasants 'niggard fields, then everything hazed into blue hugeness.
do you ever read writing? Peter DeWolf 2010
bilby commented on the word niggard
Precariously difficult to use in modern spoken discourse.
July 18, 2016
bilby commented on the word niggard
The link borks to 'Controversies about the word'.
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word niggard
Something to do with the way the Wordnik compiler processes quotation marks. I will ponder.
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word niggard
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"
July 19, 2016
bilby commented on the word niggard
Well done.
July 19, 2016