miserly
adjUK /ˈmaɪ.zə(ɹ).li/ · US /ˈmaɪ.zəɹli/
Etymology From miser + -ly, attested from the 1540s.
1
Like a miser, very or objectionably cautious with money.
- miserly habits
- miserly offer
4 more examples
- He had a miserly attitude toward spending money.
- They lived under miserly conditions despite their wealth.
- 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.1991, Art Spiegelman, Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, New York: Pantheon Books, page 131:
- 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.2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Three”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 20:
- Derived terms
- miserlily, miserliness, non-miserly, unmiserliness, unmiserly