Crossword clues for niggard
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Niggard \Nig"gard\ (n[i^]g"g[~e]rd), n. [Icel. hn["o]ggr
niggardly, stingy + -ard; cf. Sw. njugg, AS. hne['a]w.]
A person meanly stingy and covetous; one who spends
grudgingly; a stingy, parsimonious fellow; a miser.
--Chaucer.
A penurious niggard of his wealth.
--Milton.
Be niggards of advice on no pretense.
--Pope.
Niggard \Nig"gard\, a. Like a niggard; meanly covetous or parsimonious; niggardly; miserly; stingy.
Niggard \Nig"gard\, v. t. & i.
To act the niggard toward; to be niggardly. [R.]
--Shak.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"mean person, miser," late 14c., nygart, of uncertain origin. The suffix suggests French origin (see -ard), but the root word is possibly from earlier nig "stingy" (c.1300), perhaps from a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse hnøggr "stingy," from Proto-Germanic *khnauwjaz (source of Swedish njugg "close, careful," German genau "precise, exact"), and to Old English hneaw "stingy, niggardly," which did not survive in Middle English.
Wiktionary
a. 1 sparing; stinting; parsimonious. 2 miserly or stingy. n. 1 A miser or stingy person; a skinflint. 2 A false bottom in a grate, used for saving fuel. (qualifier: In this sense only, sometimes also spelled ''nigger''.)
WordNet
Usage examples of "niggard".
Say, are thy youthful hours Doled in such niggard measure, that thou must Be chary of them to thy aged uncle?
What could the life have been among these rugged and inhospitable Highlands, on this niggard and reluctant soil?
Fumbling around on your niggard acres, with your starveling livestock, when more and more big game is moving south ahead of the glaciers, elk, reindeer, boar, horse, aurochs, wisent, mammoth.
Victor and Colney had been champion duellists for the rosy and the saturnine since the former cheerfully slaved for a small stipend in the City of his affection, and the latter entered on an inheritance counted in niggard hundreds, that withdrew a briefless barrister disposed for scholarship from the forlornest of seats in the Courts.
I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love.
It looked like a garage sale thrown by the dependents of some bibliomaniacal niggard.
Wherefore, in some measure to compensate the injustice of Fortune, which to those whose strength is least, as we see it to be in the delicate frames of ladies, has been most niggard of support, I, for the succour and diversion of such of them as love (for others may find sufficient solace in the needle and the spindle and the reel), do intend to recount one hundred Novels or Fables or Parables or Stories, as we may please to call them, which were recounted in ten days by an honourable company of seven ladies and three young men in the time of the late mortal pestilence, as also some canzonets sung by the said ladies for their delectation.
Yet, while a possibility of Melvil's reformation remained, and while I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love.
And old and angry niggards of dispence,* *expense God send them soon a very pestilence!