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niggardly (adj.) "sordidly parsimonious, stingy," 1560s, from niggard + -ly (1). It was while giving a speech in Washington, to a very international audience, about the British theft of the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon.
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- Deutsch (German)
Bedeutung von niggardly: geizig; "Sordidly parsimonious,...
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The word is properly the perspicacious "sharp-sighted," also...
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In the United States, there have been several controversies involving the misunderstanding of the word niggardly, an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", because of its phonetic similarity to nigger, an ethnic slur used against black people.
The words niggard and niggardly are etymologically unrelated to the highly offensive and inflammatory racial slur euphemistically referred to as the N-word, despite the words' visual and auditory resemblance to it.
niggardly (adj.) "sordidly parsimonious, stingy," 1560s, from niggard + -ly (1). It was while giving a speech in Washington, to a very international audience, about the British theft of the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon.
The words niggard and niggardly are etymologically unrelated to the highly offensive and inflammatory racial slur euphemistically referred to as the N-word, despite the words' visual and auditory resemblance to it.
The earliest known use of the adjective niggardly is in the mid 1500s. OED's earliest evidence for niggardly is from 1549, in a translation by Thomas Chaloner, diplomat and writer. niggardly is formed within English, by derivation.
The earliest known use of the word niggard is in the Middle English period (1150—1500). OED's earliest evidence for niggard is from around 1384, in Bible (Wycliffite, early version).
