Stingy

//ˈstɪnd͡ʒi// adj, slang

adj, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unwilling to spend, give, or share; ungenerous; mean.

    ""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. 2
    Stinging; able or inclined to sting. informal

    "Bumble bee – Bumble bee / I send to you this sonnet, / But please don't be – Bumble bee / The stingy bee in my bonnet."

  3. 3
    Small, scant, meager, insufficient.

    "The realization of this joint oppression is like discovering that the stingy crusts of bread being held out by society have mold on them."

Adjective
  1. 1
    deficient in amount or quality or extent wordnet
  2. 2
    unwilling to spend (money, time, resources, etc.) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
miserlychinchyclosefistedmeagerniggardlyparsimonious

Example

More examples

"He may be rich, but he is stingy."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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

Etymology 2

From sting + -y.

Related phrases

stingy nettle

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.