miserly - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From miser +‎ -ly, attested from the 1540s.

miserly (comparative more miserly, superlative most miserly)

  1. Like a miser, very or objectionably cautious with money.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:stingy
    miserly habits
    miserly offer
    He had a miserly attitude toward spending money.
    They lived under miserly conditions despite their wealth.
    • 1991, Art Spiegelman, Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, New York: Pantheon Books, page 131:
      It's something that worries me about the book I'm doing about him... In some ways he's just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew.
    • 2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Three”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 20:
      What could be more selfish, more miserly—this in specific is what gnaws at him—than dying childless, terminating the line, subtracting oneself from the great work of generation? Worse than miserly, in fact: unnatural.

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