Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Giving or spending reluctantly.
  • adjective Scanty or meager.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Stinging; piercing, as the wind; sharp, as a criticism.
  • Ill-tempered.
  • Meanly avaricious; extremely close-fisted and covetous; niggardly: as, a stingy fellow.
  • Scanty; not full or plentiful.
  • Synonyms Parsimonious, Miserly, etc. (see penurious), illiberal, ungenerous, saving, chary.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Stinging; able to sting.
  • adjective Extremely close and covetous; meanly avaricious; niggardly; miserly; penurious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Stinging; able to sting.
  • adjective Extremely close and covetous; meanly avaricious; niggardly; miserly; penurious; as, a stingy churl.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective deficient in amount or quality or extent
  • adjective unwilling to spend

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps alteration of dialectal stingy, stinging, from sting.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sting +‎ -y

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Uncertain, possibly from *stinge, a dialectical variation of sting (verb)

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  • In wordplay, a word where you cannot delete any letter to form another word.

    --Chris Cole, Wordplay

    May 23, 2008