Dictionary

mingy en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈmɪndʒi/ (UK)
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Uncertain. Perhaps a blend of mean + stingy.

Meanings

1. (colloquial) Mean, miserly, stingy.
   • 'And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?' 'No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. 'The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each--' 1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter XV, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC:
   • After the Liberation Mrs Crewe kept on being as mingy as before with the food; and wouldn't let Harold buy any new clothes. 1974, GB Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, New York, published 2007, page 298:
   • Now all that, in its mingy way, is logical enough. 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 413:
   • The dark girl tossed her hat on the bed and hastily produced a packet of cigarettes from her bag, lighting and inhaling one with a deep exhalation of relief, saying, "Thank God for a cigarette! It's the only thing I will thank the mingy old blighter for." 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 2:
2. Small; inconsequential.
   • The great train snaked on through the dark, pounding out the miles through the empty plains and mingy hamlets of Georgia, the 'Peach State', the angry moan of its four-toned wind-horn soughing over the wide savannah and the long shaft of its single searchlight ripping the black calico of the night. 1954, Ian Fleming, “Allumeuse”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 115:

Forms

Deriveds

minginess · mingily

Synonyms

niggardly

Translations (5)

id bakhil (mean, miserly) · bg стиснат (mean, miserly) · bg скъпернически (mean, miserly) · mi kaihākere (mean, miserly) · id kikir (mean, miserly)