Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Giving or spending reluctantly.
- adj. Scanty or meager: a stingy meal; stingy with details about the past.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Stinging; piercing, as the wind; sharp, as a criticism.
- Ill-tempered.
- Meanly avaricious; extremely close-fisted and covetous; niggardly: as, a stingy fellow.
- Scanty; not full or plentiful.
- Synonyms Parsimonious, Miserly, etc. (see penurious), illiberal, ungenerous, saving, chary.
Wiktionary
- adj. Stinging; able to sting.
- adj. Extremely close and covetous; meanly avaricious; niggardly; miserly; penurious; as, a stingy churl.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Stinging; able to sting.
- adj. Extremely close and covetous; meanly avaricious; niggardly; miserly; penurious.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. deficient in amount or quality or extent
- adj. unwilling to spend
Etymologies
- Uncertain, possibly from *stinge, a dialectical variation of sting (verb) (Wiktionary)
- Perhaps alteration of dialectal stingy, stinging, from sting. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The chiefs left the ship displeased at what they called stingy conduct in the captain, as they were accustomed to receive trifling presents from the traders on the coast.”
Adventures of the first settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River
“The correct spelling of the word for stingy is tacaño.”
“States that have been labeled 'stingy' -- reported to lag behind the nation in charitable giving – - actually have higher generosity levels than those previously indicated by a widely-touted annual index, according to a new study by researchers at the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy.”
“In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, president Bush pledged $35 million and then, under pressure from the media and other nations - to say nothing of the United Nations, which accused the US of being "stingy" - increased contributions to $350 million.”
“They set up a money-market account and "became a little more stingy, which is easy when you're sitting around the house with a kid," says Mr. Williams, 32.”
“One possible reason for Bachmann's failure to win the position, as HuffPost's Ryan Grim wrote last week, is that she was known as stingy with her campaign war chest:”
The Huffington Post: Michele Bachmann's GOP Conference Chair Bid OVER
“And he did this while our country was being called stingy by the UN and was being mocked by the German media for always wanting military solutions to problems.”
Jindal, the Coast Guard, and the barges: government efficiency at its finest
“I hope you are not being stingy, which is the antithesis of an autumnal attitude.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Cara Barker: An Equinox Prescription for Love, This Autumn
“The so-called stingy-brim hat, with a brim 1-1/2 inches wide, is considered more modern than those carrying standard 2-1/2-inch widths, and straw versions have been big sellers this summer.”
“The so-called stingy-brim hat, with a brim 1½ inches wide, is considered more modern than those carrying standard 2½-inch widths, and straw versions have been big sellers this summer.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘stingy’.
-
henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
-
Russian Doll Words
A Russian Doll word is a word that, when you remove the first and last letters, is either the empty string, or a Russian Doll word. These are all of the 6 or more letter Russian Doll words found in...
waspiness, upraisers, strainers, sporangia, raspiness, prelatess, methanals, gaspiness, washings, uprisers, upraises, upraiser and 2373 more...
-
GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
-
Describing People
eye, hair, mouth, nose, tooth, head, face, arm, hand, finger, lip, leg and 212 more...
-
Y
What a -Y does to an otherwise common, dull word
zany, waxy, wavy, arty, chewy, bony, boxy, cozy, nosy, foxy, wiry, junky and 321 more...
-
LWC's Words
spork, heteroskedasticity, kurtosis, eigenspace, smithian, skewness, montanan, whoremonger, mellifluous, fishwife, papist, romanist and 142 more...
-
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
words i love
fuss, rhythm, obfuscate, sumptuous, decadence, ethereal, peach, stingy, muscle, wrapper, corpus, dastardly deed and 90 more...
-
wordplay terms
affix-clipping, alternade, alternating termi..., backswitch, balanced letter sum, beheadment, binade, capitonyms, catoptron, changeover, changing offset s..., charade and 96 more...
-
stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
-
my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
-
favorite words
ennui, bonhomie, eschew, liaison, serendipity, lovely, dusk, kitten, epitome, sexy, beloved, darling and 396 more...
-
SAT
abandon,extreme e..., abash,to humiliate, abate,to lessen, abbreviate,to sho..., abridge, abdicate,to forma..., aberration,depart..., abnormality, abet,to encourage, abhor,to hate, abide,to follow o..., abject,utterly ho... and 2228 more...
-
Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
-
5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
-
cat 2012
mala fide, trafficking, impoverished, atrocity, divulge, personify, audacity, resurrect, dubious, bloated, sovereign, rein and 123 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for stingy.

oroboros In wordplay, a word where you cannot delete any letter to form another word.
--Chris Cole, Wordplay May 23, 2008