In the United States, there have been several controversies involving the misunderstanding of the word niggardly, an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", because of its phonetic similarity to nigger, an ethnic slur used against black people. Although the two words are etymologically unrelated, niggardly is nonetheless often substituted with a synonym. People have sometimes faced backlash for using the word.
Niggardly, arising in the Middle Ages, long predates nigger, which arose in the 18th century.
Etymology
Niggardly (noun: niggard) is an adjective meaning 'stingy' or 'miserly'. Niggard (14th C) is derived from the Middle English word meaning 'stingy,' , which is probably derived from two other words also meaning 'stingy,' namely, Old Norse and Old English . The word niggle, which in modern usage means to give excessive attention to minor details, probably shares an etymology with niggardly.
Nigger, a racial slur widely considered to be offensive, derives from the Spanish word , meaning 'black', and the French word . Both and (and therefore also and nigger) ultimately come from , the accusative case singular masculine and neuter form of the Latin masculine adjective , meaning 'black' or 'dark'. The first recorded use of nigger dates to 1574, and its first recorded derogatory use to 1775. Plays on the similarity of the two words date back at least a century, one example being a piece of sheet music from 1900.
David Howard incident
On January 15, 1999, David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony A. Williams, used "niggardly" in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues, who misinterpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25, Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.
After public pressure, an internal review into the matter was brought about, and the mayor offered Howard the chance to return to his position at the Office of the Public Advocate on February 4. Howard refused but accepted another position with the mayor instead, insisting that he did not feel victimized by the incident. On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. "I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind; that's naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person [can] afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does."
It had been speculated that this incident inspired Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, though Roth has stated that his source was an incident in the career of sociologist and professor Melvin Tumin.
Public response
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 niggardly should be avoided. As James Poniewozik wrote in Salon, the controversy was "an issue that opinion-makers right, left and center could universally agree on." He wrote that "the defenders of the dictionary" were "legion, and still queued up six abreast". Julian Bond, then chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, deplored the offense that had been taken at Howard's use of the word. "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding", he said. Bond also said, "Seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on the issue" and that as a nation the US has a "hair-trigger sensibility" on race that can be tripped by both real and false grievances.
University of Wisconsin–Madison incident
Shortly after the Washington incident, another controversy erupted over the use of the word at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At a February 1999 meeting of the Faculty Senate, Amelia Rideau, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union, told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly. She later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C., controversy that had come to light the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."