stingy

[bbeeton]

Today I came across this description, referring to Portuguese men'o'war that had washed up on a Virginia beach:

What brings these unusual and stingy visitors to our shores is not a mystery. Blame it on the weather.

Clearly the meaning has nothing to do with "parsimonious", and it should be pronounced with a hard "g".

A few online dictionaries (e.g., Wiktionary) recognize both the meaning and the pronunciation, but none of the majors. Hence one assumes this usage is fairly recent.

A description of the man'o'war brings forth some other interesting terms: siphonophore and zooid. Here's the source in case anyone's interested:
https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/painf ... a-beaches/

[Slava]

According to my Century dictionary (~1900), the barbed meaning came first. The parsimonious meaning is an assibilated pronunciation, and may have come about from the idea of being mean-spirited, as if stung and perhaps angry.

Fun trip there, and I even learned assibilated. I presume it's the -zh sound in the greedy version that is what is considered a sibilant.