What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Niggard vs Voracious - What's the difference?

niggard | voracious |

As adjectives the difference between niggard and voracious

is that niggard is sparing; stinting; parsimonious while voracious is wanting or devouring great quantities of food.

As a noun niggard

is a miser or stingy person; a skinflint.

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

    *

    voracious

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Wanting or devouring great quantities of food.
  • * 1719 , , Robinson Crusoe , ch. 6:
    • I never had so much as . . . one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages.
  • * 1867 , , ch. 45:
    • The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.
  • * 1910 , , "The Human Drift":
    • Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious , the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions.
  • Having a great appetite for anything (e.g., a voracious reader ).
  • * 1922 , , ch. 7:
    • If he carried chiefly his appetite, a zeal for tiled bathrooms, a conviction that the Pullman car is the acme of human comfort, and a belief that it is proper to tip waiters, taxicab drivers, and barbers, but under no circumstances station agents and ushers, then his Odyssey will be replete with good meals and bad meals, bathing adventures, compartment-train escapades, and voracious demands for money.
  • * 2005 , Nathan Thornburgh, " The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies," Time , 29 Aug.:
    • Methodical and voracious , these hackers wanted all the files they could find.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * voraciously * voraciousness * voracity