Dictionary Definition
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Adjective
- Withholding for the sake of meanness
Usage notes
Some people erroneously regard this term as offensive, since it resembles the term “nigger”; however, etymologically the two words are unrelated. See .Extensive Definition
There have been several controversies about the
word "niggardly", an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", in
the United
States due to the phonetic similarity to the racial slur
"nigger". The two words
are otherwise unrelated.
Word origins
"Niggardly" (noun: "niggard") is an adjective
meaning "stingy" or "miserly", related to the Norwegian
verb nigle. It is cognate with "niggling", meaning "petty" or
"unimportant", as in "the niggling details".
"Nigger" derives from the Spanish/Portuguese
word negro, meaning "black", and probably also the French
nègre, which is likewise a racist insult derived from negro (the
ordinary French word for "black" being noir). Both negro and noir
(and therefore also nègre and nigger) ultimately come from nigrum,
the accusative
declension of the
Latin word
niger, meaning "black".
David Howard incident
On January 15 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., United States, used the word in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who incorrectly interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25 Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.However, after pressure from the gay
community (of which Howard was a member) an internal review
into the matter was brought about, and the mayor offered Howard the
chance to return to his position as Office of the Public Advocate
on February 4.
Howard refused but accepted another position with the mayor
instead, insisting that he did not feel victimized by the incident.
On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the
situation. "I used to think it would be great if we could all be
colorblind. That's naive, especially for a white person, because a
white person can't afford to be colorblind. They don't have to
think about race every day. An African
American does."
It has been speculated that this incident
inspired Philip Roth's
novel The Human
Stain.
Public response
The Howard incident led to a national debate in
the U.S., in the context of racial sensitivity and political
correctness, on whether use of the word niggardly should be
avoided. Some observers noted however that the "national debate"
was made up almost entirely of commentators defending use of the
word. As James Poniewozik wrote in Salon, the
controversy was "an issue that opinion-makers right, left and
center could universally agree on." He wrote that "the defenders of
the dictionary" were "legion, and still queued up six
abreast."
Julian Bond,
then chairman of the NAACP, deplored the
offense that had been taken at Howard's use of the word. "You hate
to think you have to censor your language to meet other people’s
lack of understanding", he said. "David Howard should not have
quit. Mayor Williams should bring him back — and order dictionaries
issued to all staff who need them."
Bond also said, "Seems to me the mayor has been
niggardly in his judgment on the issue. [...] We have a
hair-trigger sensibility, and I think that is particularly true of
racial minorities."
University of Wisconsin incident
Shortly after the Washington incident, another
controversy erupted over the use of the word at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. At a February meeting of the
Faculty Senate, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the
Black Student Union told the group how a professor teaching
Chaucer had
used the word niggardly. The student later said she was unaware of
the related Washington, D.C. controversy that came to light just
the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word
even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears,
shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the
class to decide whether my feelings are valid."
The student's plea, offered as evidence in
support of the school's speech code,
instead struck an unintended chord helping to destroy it. "Many
'abolitionists', as they now were called, believe that [the
student's] speech, widely reported, was the turning point,"
according to an article in Reason magazine. An editorial in the
Wisconsin
State Journal addressed the student who complained, saying:
"Thank you [...] for clarifying precisely why the UW-Madison does
not need an academic speech code. [...] Speech codes have a
chilling effect on academic
freedom and they reinforce defensiveness among students who
ought to be more open to learning." and told to attend sensitivity
training.
The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used
"niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. But
parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word,
saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur,
the Wilmington
Star-News reported.
Dallas Morning News
At some point before the Washington, D.C., incident (of early 1999), The Dallas Morning News had banned the use of the word after its use in a restaurant review had raised complaints.An old complaint
An article in McClure's magazine in March 1924 prints this exchange (although it may have been from a short story, making it a fictional complaint and a (humorous?) observation by the author of the potential for confusion):- "'A niggardly and disgusting habit,' I commented. ... 'Just lay off that "nigger" stuff after this,' warned Pete."
Publicity and new racially tinged use of the word
The public controversies caused some commentators
to speculate that "niggardly" would be used more often, both in its
correct sense and as fodder for childish humor, as a racist code
word or both.
"The word's new lease of life is probably among
manufacturers and retailers of sophomoric humor", wrote John
Derbyshire, a conservative commentator, in 2002. "I bet that
even as I write, some adolescent boys, in the stairwell of some
high school somewhere in America, are accusing each other of being
niggardly, and sniggering at their own outrageous wit. I bet ...
Wait a minute. 'Sniggering'? Oh, my God...."
Derbyshire wrote that although he loved to use
words that are sometimes considered obscure, he wouldn't use the
word in mixed
company, especially among less-educated African Americans, out
of politeness and not wanting to make someone feel uncomfortable,
regardless of any non-racial meanings he would intend.
Shortly after the Washington, D.C., incident,
James Poniewozik wrote in his column at Slate online magazine
that some were already using "niggardly" in a way that made their
motives ambiguous. He quoted a posting by "chill10d" at a reader
forum at the New York
Times Web site "who just happened to use 'niggardly'
— linguistically correctly" in commenting on two
witnesses to a Congressional investigation:
"You can't say chill10d -- white, black or
Klingon for all I know -- had racist motives. And you can't exactly
not say it", Poniewozik wrote. He expected a number of "pinheads"
to be asking "black waitresses not to be 'niggardly' with the
coffee."
But there would be a different reaction in polite
company, especially in racially mixed company, so the word would
probably be thought of only when people think of racial epithets.
"In theory, you, I and the columnist next door will defend to the
death our right to say 'niggardly'. But in practice, will we use
it?"
See also
- Profanity
- Tar baby, a term which has similarly been construed as racist.
- Macaca incident and water buffalo incident, similar controversies involving remarks perceived as racist.
References
External links
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Lenten,
Spartan, abstemious, ascetic, austere, bountiful, cheeseparing, chinchy, chintzy, close, closefisted, closefistedly, dwarfed, dwarfish, exiguous, frugal, grudging, illiberal, illiberally, impoverished, infrequent, jejune, lean, limited, little, meager, mean, meanly, mingy, miserly, narrow, niggard, paltry, parsimonious,
penny-pinching, penurious, petty, piddling, pinchpenny, poor, puny, rare, scant, scanty, scarce, scattered, scrawny, scrimp, scrimping, scrimpy, seldom met with, seldom
seen, shabbily,
shabby, skimp, skimping, skimpy, slender, slight, slim, small, sordid, sordidly, spare, sparing, sparse, spotty, sprinkled, starvation, stingily, stingy, stinted, straitened, stunted, subsistence, thin, tight, tightfisted, tightfistedly, unchivalrous, ungenerous, ungenerously, unnourishing, unnutritious, watered, watery