miserly
/ˈmʌɪzəli
/adjective
1Of or characteristic of a miser: his miserly great-uncle proved to be worth nearly £1 million...
- He gave a seamless performance of the miserly Dickens character.
- When you feel that everyone at the office has noticed your miserly and cheap behavior, start to make them feel guilty about their own extravagances.
- Old men, conscious that they are about to leave the good things of the world, are grasping and miserly.
Synonyms
mean, niggardly, parsimonious, close-fisted;
penny-pinching, cheese-paring, grasping, greedy, avaricious, Scrooge-like, ungenerous, illiberal, close;
ascetic, puritanical, masochistic
informal stingy, mingy, tight, tight-fisted, money-grubbing, money-grabbing
North American informal cheap
vulgar slang tight-arsed
archaic near
1.1(Of a quantity) pitiably small or inadequate: the prize for the winner will be a miserly £3,500...
- Its revenues soared an average of 36% through the 1990s, but now it's heading into miserly single-digit growth.
- However, to many it seemed to raise productivity growth by a miserly one percent per year.
- The current amount of $12,000 is a miserly and paltry amount that I strongly believe should be much higher.
Synonyms
meagre, inadequate, paltry, limited, insufficient, deficient, negligible, insubstantial, skimpy, miserable, lamentable, pitiful, puny, niggardly, beggarly
informal measly, stingy, lousy, pathetic, piddling
rare exiguous