stingy

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English

Etymology 1

Uncertain, possibly from stinge, a dialectal variation of sting (verb).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: stĭnʹjē, IPA(key): /ˈstɪnd͡ʒi/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪnd͡ʒi

Adjective

stingy (comparative stingier, superlative stingiest)

  1. Unwilling to spend, give, or share; ungenerous; mean
    • 1909, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter XVIII, in Anne of Avonlea:
      "Well, I'm doing my best to grow," said Davy, "but it's a thing you can't hurry much. If Marilla wasn't so stingy with her jam I believe I'd grow a lot faster."
  2. Small, scant, meager, insufficient
    • 1985 April 13, Charles Henry Fuller, “Learning to Draw my Name”, in Gay Community News, page 8:
      The realization of this joint oppression is like discovering that the stingy crusts of bread being held out by society have mold on them.
    • 2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face, International New York Times, 10 September 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times‎:
      As the moon wheels around Earth every 28 days and shows us a progressively greater and then stingier slice of its sun-lightened face, the distance between the moon and Earth changes, too. At the nearest point along its egg-shaped orbit, its perigee, the moon may be 26,000 miles closer to us than it is at its far point.
Usage notes

Usage of "stingy of" was about as common as usage of "stingy with" until about 1900 but became much less common by and since 1920.

Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
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Etymology 2

sting +‎ -y

Pronunciation

Adjective

stingy (comparative stingier, superlative stingiest)

  1. (informal) Stinging; able or inclined to sting.
    • 2015, Kelvin Smith, Four Little Soldiers, page 33:
      Bumble bee – Bumble bee / I send to you this sonnet, / But please don't be – Bumble bee / The stingy bee in my bonnet.
Translations

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