mingyadj/ˈmɪndʒi/

• 1

  Mean, miserly, stingy.

  • 'And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?' 'No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. 'The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each--'
  • The dark girl tossed her hat on the bed and hastily produced a packet of cigarettes from her bag, lighting and inhaling one with a deep exhalation of relief, saying, "Thank God for a cigarette! It's the only thing I will thank the mingy old blighter for."
• 2

  Small; inconsequential.

  • The great train snaked on through the dark, pounding out the miles through the empty plains and mingy hamlets of Georgia, the 'Peach State', the angry moan of its four-toned wind-horn soughing over the wide savannah and the long shaft of its single searchlight ripping the black calico of the night.