niggard
Americannoun
-
niggards
plural
adjective
noun
adjective
Sensitive Note
The words niggard and niggardly are often misinterpreted as racial slurs because they sound like what is probably the most offensive word in the English language. Actually, niggard dates back to Middle English. The first element nygg-, nig- was borrowed from a Scandinavian source, and -ard is a pejorative suffix. The adjective and adverb niggardly is a modern English formation from niggard. Historical linguists and others familiar with the etymology of these words know that they are not truly related to the word nigger. However, the source of a term is not as important as how it is perceived and used in contemporary language. So even if the words niggard and niggardly are not racial slurs in their etymologies, meanings, or historical uses, it may be wisest to avoid these terms. The connotation or perception of any word is determined by how it is used, received, and interpreted; niggard and niggardly may be offensive to many speakers because of this speculative, but false, etymology.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of niggard
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English nyggard, nigard “a stingy person,” from earlier nig “a stingy person” (from Old Norse; compare Old Icelandic hnöggr “stingy,” dialectal Swedish njugg, nygg “parsimonious”; akin to Old English hnēaw “stingy”) + -ard
Vocabulary lists containing niggard
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The Aga Khans have been generously rewarded by Britannia—no niggard when she obtains good value for her money.
From Time Magazine Archive
Flowing around you, not brooding and nursing every niggard stone.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
As it happened, Curran was a master of invective, and no niggard of his shafts; so Fitzgibbon tried flattery, and got jeered at for his pains, which produced a hurricane of sarcasm.
From My Lords of Strogue, Vol. I (of III) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Lewis Wingfield
They began to look the most snivelling of sins as I watched, with spacious leisure, the near procession of gigantic trees, that superb wild which did not arise from such niggard and flinty maxims.
From The Sea and the Jungle by H. M. (Henry Major) Tomlinson
Nature has scattered the necessaries of existence with a niggard hand over these desert plains, and the supply of water is indeed scanty.
From The Highlands of Ethiopia by William Cornwallis Harris
“Be niggards of advice on no pretence, For the worst avarice is that of sense.” l.
From Hazlitt on English Literature An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature by Jacob Zeitlin
On March 7 he writes: "I have centered all my hopes on Paris, for the German princes are all niggards."
From Mozart: the man and the artist, as revealed in his own words by Friedrich Kerst
Nature—it seems—when she meant us for earth Spent so much of her treasure in the birth As ever after niggards her, and she, Thus stor'd within, beggars us outwardly.
From Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II by E. K. (Edmund Kerchever) Chambers
“Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses,” says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards.
From The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
The authorities of the London and Suburban Bank were no niggards.
From The Man Upstairs and Other Stories by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
