Etymology Uncertain, possibly from stinge, a dialectal variation of sting (verb).
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."1909, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter XVIII, in Anne of Avonlea:
2
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.1985 April 13, Charles Henry Fuller, “Learning to Draw my Name”, in Gay Community News, page 8:
As the moon wheels around Earth every 28 days and shows us a progressively greater and then stingier slice of its sun-lightened face, the distance between the moon and Earth changes, too. At the nearest point along its egg-shaped orbit, its perigee, the moon may be 26,000 miles closer to us than it is at its far point.2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face, International New York Times, 10 September 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times:
Bumble bee – Bumble bee / I send to you this sonnet, / But please don't be – Bumble bee / The stingy bee in my bonnet.2015, Kelvin Smith, Four Little Soldiers, page 33: