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Parsimonious vs Niggard - What's the difference?

parsimonious | niggard |

As adjectives the difference between parsimonious and niggard

is that parsimonious is exhibiting parsimony; sparing in expenditure of money; frugal to excess; penurious; niggardly; stingy while niggard is sparing; stinting; parsimonious.

As a noun niggard is

a miser or stingy person; a skinflint.

parsimonious

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in expenditure of money; frugal to excess; penurious; niggardly; stingy.
  • Using a minimal number of assumptions, steps, or conjectures.
  • *
  • * Kiplinger's Personal Finance , January 2002
    • The first three college-savings plans stand out for their parsimonious expenses...
    Statistical methods offer the ability to enforce parsimonious selection of the most influential potential predictors of each gene's state.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    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 ;
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    • 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

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