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Niggard vs Niggardly - What's the difference?

niggard | niggardly |

As adjectives the difference between niggard and niggardly

is that niggard is sparing; stinting; parsimonious while niggardly is withholding for the sake of meanness; stingy, miserly.

As a noun niggard

is a miser or stingy person; a skinflint.

As an adverb niggardly is

in a parsimonious way; sparingly, stingily.

niggard

English

Alternative forms

* (l)

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Sparing; stinting; parsimonious.
  • Miserly or stingy.
  • * 1852 , , Chambers' Edinburgh Journal :
    • [H]is heart swelled within him, as he sat at the head of his own table, on the occasion of the house-warming, dispensing with no niggard hand the gratuitous viands and unlimited beer, which were at once to symbolise and inaugurate the hospitality of his mansion.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A miser or stingy person; a skinflint.
  • * 1618 , , The Pennyles Pilgrimage OR The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor :
    • All his pleasures were social; and while health and fortune smiled upon him, he was no niggard either of his time or talents to those who needed them.
  • * 1955 , , The Return of the King , Book VI, Chapter 6 "Many Partings":
    • ‘No niggard are you, Éomer,’ said Aragorn, ‘to give thus to Gondor the fairest thing in your realm!’
  • A false bottom in a grate, used for saving fuel.
  • * Edward Bulwer Lytton, Godolphin
    • It was evening: he ordered a fire and lights; and, leaning his face on his hand as he contemplated the fitful and dusky upbreakings of the flame through the bars of the niggard and contracted grate
  • * From a catalog of the Great Exhibition of 1851:
  • *:Cooking apparatus, adapted for an opening eight feet wide, by five feet high, and containing an open-fire roasting range, with sliding spit-racks and winding cheek or niggard ;
  • *
  • *

    • Usage notes

    (Controversies about the word "niggardly") * This word is unrelated to the racial epithet nigger (a corruption of the Spanish word ), but some in the United States have taken offense at the word's use due to the phonetic similarity between the words.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * (l)/(l) * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l)

    Related terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l)

    Anagrams

    *

    niggardly

    English

    (Controversies about the word "niggardly")

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Withholding for the sake of meanness; stingy, miserly.
  • * Bishop Hall
    • Where the owner of the house will be bountiful, it is not for the steward to be niggardly .
  • * 1919 ,
    • They were not niggardly , these tramps, and he who had money did not hesitate to share it among the rest.
  • * 1958 , , The Affluent Society (1998 edition), ISBN 9780395925003, p. 186:
    • This manifests itself in an implacable tendency to provide an opulent supply of some things and a niggardly yield of others.

    Synonyms

    * miserly, stingy. * See also

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • In a parsimonious way; sparingly, stingily.
  • *, New York 2001, p.105:
    • because many families are compelled to live niggardly , exhaust and undone by great dowers, none shall be given at all, or very little […].

    Usage notes

    * This term may cause offence as it is easily misinterpreted to be an adverbial form of the racial epithet (nigger). Racist Language, Real and Imagined , Steven Pinker. February 2, 1999. The New York Times (editorial). The two words are etymologically unrelated.

    References

    See also

    * (Controversies about the word "niggardly")