Niggardly
Encyclopedia : N : NI : NIG : Niggardly
Niggardly is a word synonymous with stingy and miserly, and a niggard (noun) is a miser. They are both derived from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning "to fuss about small matters". (The English word "niggle" retains the original Norse meaning.)
David Howard incident
On January 15 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., United States, used the word in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who incorrectly interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25 Williams forced Howard to resign.However, after an internal review into the matter and pressure from the gay community (of which Howard was a member), the mayor offered Howard the chance to return to his position as Office of the Public Advocate on February 4. Howard refused but accepted another position with the mayor instead.
The Howard incident led to a national debate in the U.S., in the context of racial sensitivity and political correctness, on whether use of the word niggardly should be avoided because of its potential association with the extremely pejorative racial slur nigger, despite the entirely separate and unrelated etymologies of the two words ("nigger" derives from niger, the Latin for "black").
See also
- Leaf by Niggle, a short story by J. R. R. Tolkien with an eponymous protagonist whose name shares an etymology with "niggardly".
- Water buffalo incident, for information about a similar occurrence at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993.
External links
- [Washington Post article on the David Howard incident]
- [Details of the Niggardly Controversy] from a [Adversity.Net] "for victims of reverse discrimination"
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