stingy

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

• enPR: stĭnʹjē, IPA^(key): /ˈstɪndʒi/

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stingy (comparative stingier, superlative stingiest)

1. Unwilling to spend, give, or share; ungenerous; mean
   • 1909, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea Chapter XVIII

     "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
   • 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.

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

• See also Thesaurus:stingy

sting +‎ -y

• enPR: stĭngʹē, IPA^(key): /ˈstɪŋi/

stingy (comparative stingier, superlative stingiest)

1. Stinging; able to sting.

• Yingst, stying, tyings