considering that yahoos will make baseless comparisons, plus the fact that it's practically archaic in usage. The yahoos are making hay with this comment, seeing that all discussion of Sherrod Brown's statement centers around that single word; the real meat of his statement is lost in a thick sauce of ignorance.

Don't be niggardly in your taunts towards the ignorant!

This is so f-ing ridiculous. I hope he doesn't "apologize." Reducing centuries of oppression to fixation on a similar-sounding word trivializes the suffering of millions. Idiots.

and stop asking those penetrating questions!

For that reason it's probably time to take the word out of rotation. It's too bad, but that's just how it is.

is this one word worth the effort to save? Go ahead and fight for niggardly if you think it's worth the risk of a huge misunderstanding of your character.

because of ignorance? Niggardly derives from an old Norse word, through Old English. It has no relationship with the derivation of the offensive word. Lots of words have similar sounds, but different etymologies.

If you want more information, Google niggardly etymology. There are several good sources of etymological information on the web.

The offensive n-word derives from the Latin word for black. Completely different origins. The "d" in the word makes all the difference.

Now, you could use the word "stingy" as an alternative, or even "mean," which has the same meaning as one of its definitions. But why should an educated person have to use some other word? There are dictionaries everywhere, and getting a definition is as easy as typing the word in your browser.

besides homo sapiens? There are seriously people out there who get confused by that, as well.

nig·gard·ly/ˈnigərdlē/
Adjective:
Not generous; stingy: "the company was particularly niggardly with salaries"; "serving out the rations with a niggardly hand".
Adverb:
In a stingy or meager manner.
Synonyms:
adjective. stingy - miserly - mean - parsimonious - niggard - skimpy
adverb. meanly - scantily

"Niggardly" (noun: "niggard&quot is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla = "to fuss about small matters". It is cognate with "niggling", meaning "petty" or "unimportant", as in "the niggling details".

But people hear something with preconceived notions. Like the fuss in the Dallas city council a few years abo because someone described the traffic ticket office as a "black hole"-i.e. paperwork went in and disappeared and never came back out. So of course someone decided that a physics term was racist.

Apparently first use in 14th c. Britain and unlikely to have any realation to negro, an adoption from the Spanish word for black in the 16th c.

Points for Hitchens in the below...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=niggard&searchmode=none

niggard
mid-14c., nygart, of uncertain origin. The suffix suggests French origin (cf. -ard), but the root word is probably related to O.N. hnøggr "stingy," from P.Gmc. *khnauwjaz (cf. Swed. njugg "close, careful," Ger. genau "precise, exact&quot , and to O.E. hneaw "stingy, niggardly," which did not survive in Middle English.

niggardly
1560s, from niggard + -ly (2).
It was while giving a speech in Washington, to a very international audience, about the British theft of the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon. I described the attitude of the current British authorities as "niggardly." Nobody said anything, but I privately resolved — having felt the word hanging in the air a bit — to say "parsimonious" from then on. (Christopher Hitchens, "The Pernicious Effects of Banning Words," Slate.com, Dec. 4, 2006)

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1725/is-niggardly-a-racist-word

Sure, the origin of "niggard" is unclear, but not its timeline, which predates the N-word in the English language by a couple hundred years at least. "Niggard" comes up as early as Chaucer, late 14th century. The most commonly speculated origin is Scandanavian nig/Old Norse hnoggr, meaning miserly. Don't know how much faith you want to put in Indo-European roots, but one meaning of the root ken- is conjectured to relate a family of words with a connotation implying closing, tightening, or pinching (the family of related words is hypothesized to include such n-words as nap, nibble, nod, nosh, neap, nip). The racial slur "nigger," on the other hand, doesn't enter the lexicon until the 1500's, first as "neger" or "neeger," obviously from the same root as the French negre and Spanish negro, words for the color black, which are derived from the Latin niger.

There's nothing you can do about homonyms and associations, however. And who knows, maybe the two words have become associated in people's minds through the centuries, so that 200 years ago people started thinking one had to be related to the other. Now of course, no one even knows the first word any more, possibly because of the way it sounds. So when someone uses it, you see what happens. So this word is probably on the way out, but you can't blame old folk for happening to use it.

Nothing at all. If people object to it, they should be directed to their dictionary.

i have used it a lifetime.

i was talking to master degree hubby who grew up in texas and so is REAL sensitive to racism and other minority groups.... (except women of course, he was totally clueless cause so engrained in culture, and fun, rollin eyes).....

he is offended by the word. was just sure it was pulled from racist terminology. made him prove it to me. he looked it up and learned it has nothing to do with race. but i had to respect him being sensitive to racism and how others may perceive, so i have pretty much stopped using the word.

though i love the word in its meaning.

ah well....

but no, we are better than this and we should know the meaning and not attack a person that uses it properly.

meaning "a meanly covetous or stingy person"

Not from the Spanish or Portuguese negro, meaning "black"

No relationship of these words whatsoever.

There was no racial context to this, so the only people it should offend are the stupid (Republicans talking about a double standard). However, if someone like Rush Limbaugh used it in the context of talking about Obama or another black person, we could legitimately question whether he chose that word specifically because he was talking about black people.