English-Thai Dictionary

niggardly

ADJ ขี้เหนียว  ขี้ตืด  ตระหนี่  grudging scrimy ke-nio

 

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

NIGGARDLY

a. 1. Meanly covetous or avaricious; sordidly parsimonious; extremely sparing of expense.
Where the owner of the house will be bountiful, it is not for the steward to be niggardly.
2. Sparing; wary; cautiously avoiding profusion.

 

NIGGARDLY

adv. Sparingly; with cautious parsimony.

 

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

NIGGARDLY

NIGGARDLY Nig "gard *ly, a.

 

Defn: Meanly covetous or avarcious in dealing with others; stingy; niggard. Where the owner of the house will be bountiful, it is not for the steward to be niggardly. Bp. Hall.

 

Syn. -- Avarcious; covetous; parsimonious; sparing; miserly; penurios; sordid; stingy. See Avaricious.

 

NIGGARDLY

NIGGARDLY Nig "gard *ly, adv.

 

Defn: In a niggard manner.

 

New American Oxford Dictionary

niggardly

nig gard ly |ˈnigərdlē ˈnɪɡərdli | ▶adjective not generous; stingy: serving out the rations with a niggardly hand. • meager; scanty: their share is a niggardly 2.7 percent. ▶adverb archaic in a stingy or meager manner. DERIVATIVES nig gard li ness noun usage: See usage at niggard .

 

Oxford Dictionary

niggardly

nig |gard ¦ly |ˈnɪgədli | ▶adjective ungenerous with money, time, etc. ; mean: Madame's niggardly nature. • meagre and given grudgingly: niggardly allowances from the Treasury. ▶adverb archaic in a mean or meagre manner. DERIVATIVES niggardliness noun ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from niggard + -ly 1 . usage: The word niggardly has no connection with the highly offensive term nigger, but because of the similarity of sound and its negative meaning of ‘mean, ungenerous ’ many people are uncomfortable with using it for fear of causing offence, and in the US it is now widely avoided.

 

American Oxford Thesaurus

niggardly

niggardly adjective 1 a niggardly person: cheap, mean, miserly, parsimonious, close-fisted, penny-pinching, cheeseparing, grasping, ungenerous, illiberal; informal stingy, tight, tightfisted. ANTONYMS generous. 2 niggardly rations: meager, inadequate, scanty, scant, skimpy, paltry, sparse, insufficient, deficient, short, lean, small, slender, poor, miserable, pitiful, puny; informal measly, stingy, pathetic, piddling. ANTONYMS lavish, abundant. WORD NOTE niggardly I was once giving a speech to a group of students in South Carolina, and happened to make reference to the niggardly pay raise that was then being offered to a group of local strikers —whereupon three members of the audience, two of them white and one black, walked out in evident protest. Much the same had happened in Washington, DC, a month or so before: a local civil servant was excoriated for having used the same word, one which, to some ill-educated members of his audience, was deemed to be —since it had a similarity of sound —racist and offensive. Of course, most users of this book will, ipso facto, be educated and liberally rounded people, and even if unaware of the precise etymology will know that this synonym for "parsimonious " has no connection whatsoever with the presently offensive and generally unusable word nigger (my caveat here refers only to the accepted and acceptable use of nigger within some racially and socially circumscribed communities ). Niggardly almost certainly comes from a Scandinavian term for "a stingy person, " and it is, so far as is known, ethnically and chromatically untainted. So even if only to annoy the ignorant and pedantic watchdogs of correctness, this word should, I think, be used frequently. There is a much nobler reason to do so also, of course: it is a quite splendid-sounding and -looking word, easy on both the eye and the ear. — SW Conversational, opinionated, and idiomatic, these Word Notes are an opportunity to see a working writer's perspective on a particular word or usage.

 

Oxford Thesaurus

niggardly

niggardly adjective 1 the critic must not be niggardly with his advice: mean, miserly, parsimonious, close-fisted, penny-pinching, cheese-paring, penurious, grasping, greedy, avaricious, Scrooge-like, ungenerous, illiberal, close; informal stingy, mingy, tight, tight-fisted, money-grubbing, money-grabbing; N. Amer. informal cheap; vulgar slang tight-arsed; archaic near. ANTONYMS generous. 2 his men complained of niggardly rations: meagre, inadequate, scanty, scant, paltry, limited, restricted, modest, insufficient, sparse, spare, deficient, negligible, insubstantial, skimpy, short, little, lean, small, slight, slender, poor, miserable, pitiful, puny; informal measly, stingy, pathetic, piddling; rare exiguous. ANTONYMS lavish, abundant.

 

Sanseido Wisdom Dictionary

niggardly

n í g gard ly 形容詞 1 «…に » けちな «with » , «…を » 出し惜しみする «of » (↔generous ).2 わずかな, とても少ない ▸ a niggardly allowance けちくさい手当 [金 ]副詞 けちけちして .n í g gard li ness 名詞 U けちくさいこと .