niggard

adj

1. Sparing; stinting; parsimonious.
2. Miserly or stingy.

   “It was, however, the pleasure of his niggard and unhappy fortune, that in seeking a place proper for his accommodation, he and Dapple tumbled into a deep and very dark pit, among a number of old buildings.”

   “[H]is heart swelled within him, as he sat at the head of his own table, on the occasion of the house-warming, dispensing with no niggard hand the gratuitous viands and unlimited beer, which were at once to symbolise and inaugurate the hospitality of his mansion.”

noun

1. A miser or stingy person; a skinflint.

   “Then beautious nigard why dooſt thou abuſe / The bountious largeſſe giuen thee to giue?”

   “All his pleasures were social; and while health and fortune smiled upon him, he was no niggard either of his time or talents to those who needed them.”

   “‘No niggard are you, Éomer,’ said Aragorn, ‘to give thus to Gondor the fairest thing in your realm!’”

2. A false bottom in a grate, used for saving fuel.

   “1833, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Godolphin It was evening: he ordered a fire and lights; and, leaning his face on his hand as he contemplated the fitful and dusky upbreakings of the flame through the bars of the niggard and contracted grate […]”

   “1851, From a catalog of the Great Exhibition Cooking apparatus, adapted for an opening eight feet wide, by five feet high, and containing an open-fire roasting range, with sliding spit-racks and winding cheek or niggard;”

   “Neither this nor the Brompton house have a kitchen-range (that is, Grate like the Miles's), but only a grate with moveable niggards etc.”

   “A niggard was a movable side to the kitchen grate which could be wound up with a handle so as to make the fire […]”

verb

1. (intransitive)To hoard; to act stingily.

   “Within thine owne bud burieſt thy content, / And tender chorle makſt waſt in niggarding: […]”