Month: September 2016

We all have one friend who, when the bill arrives, is MIA. That friend, if they can ever be located, doesn’t believe in tipping either: They’re a true skinflint who holds their money in a death grip. Though skinflint and tightwad are terrific words, there are quite a few synonyms and adjectives sprinkled throughout the history of English. Even when the subject matter is parsimonious, the lexicon is always giving and ready to buy another round.

1. DRY-FIST

Many stingy words mention the hand or fist, and this one equates dryness with cheapness. The Oxford English Dictionary examples include mentions of “filthy dry-fisted knights” and “dryfisted patrons.” Today we’d talk about cheap bastards or miserly garbage people.

2. MINGY

This unpleasant-sounding word rhymes with stingy and may be a blend with mean. Mingy has been around just over 100 years and is used in an absolutely juicy insult from a 1912 letter by poet Rupert Brooke: “I called you a mingy and coprologous Oxford poetaster.” Rarely, mingy can also be a noun, as seen in a reprimand from 1939’s To Love and to Cherish by Michael Egan: “Don’t be a mingy, father; they only cost a shilling.”

3. NARROW-SOULED

Of course, narrow-minded is a common word for someone with a one-track mind, but this word applies to someone with an unusually svelte soul. Narrow-souled has referred to various types of pettiness since the 1600s, including penny-pinching. At times, narrow all by itself has also meant stingy, if you’re looking for a new euphemism for an embarrassing companion.

4. PARTAN-HANDED

Partan was originally a word for a crab in the 1400s, and in the 1800s it evolved into an insult for people who were a bit, well, crabby. From there, it spawned a variety of insults such as partan-faced and partan-handed, which suggests a rather specific sort of closed-fistedness.

5. PURSE-BOUND

The idea is that your purse is so tightly wrapped—perhaps with ropes, chains, and crazy glue—that it’s never opening again. The first known use, by playwright James Shirley in 1653, includes a preview of the next term: “I may Tell you, my Father is a little costive, Purse-bound, his pension cannot find me tooth-picks.”

6. COSTIVE

The first uses of costive, from around 1400, refer to a constrictive state of affairs far beyond the scope of this list: the costive are constipated. By the 1600s, this word for hard, unyielding bowels had spread to vicious, close-fisted tightwads. Costive could also refer to any type of ungenerous behavior, as seen in a 1606 use by George Chapman in the amusingly titled Sir Gyles Goosecappe: “Is your Lorde Costiue of laughter, or laxatiue of laughter?” Apparently the bowel-y origins of this word were not forgotten.

7. SAVE-ALL

This mostly self-explanatory word has had a few meanings over the years, but in the 1700s it meant the opposite of a spend-all. Poet John Keats used the term in an 1820 letter that offered an unflattering description: “There is old Lord Burleigh, the high-priest of economy, the political save-all.”

8. AND 9. CHINCHERD AND CHINCHY

Today chintzy is still used as a synonym for stingy, but there are some older relatives with similar meanings: chincherd (a noun) and chinchy (an adjective). They all derive from chinch, an adjective for tight-fisted behavior since the 1400s.

10. SNUDGE

In the 1500s and 1600s, this was a common word for a miser. Snudge can also be a verb: You’re snudging if you’re holding your wallet tight in the manner of Ebenezer Scrooge. This word demands a revival. When someone stiffs us on a bill, we should say they snudged us or acted like a total snudge.

11. AND 12. CLUSTERFIST AND CLOSE-FIST

First found in the 1600s, clusterfist can refer to a few types of disappointing individuals. In one sense, cluster means clumsy, and a clusterfist is a type of oaf or boor. But cluster can also mean closed, and this is a synonym for another tightwaddy term, close-fist. This 1655 use by Charles Sorel describes a disgusting lack of generosity in the important realm of cake: “My owne cakes..of which he never proffered me so much as the least crum, so base a Cluster-fist was he.”

The Waste Shark is like a Roomba for the ocean. A small aquatic drone that can vacuum up 1100 pounds of floating trash, the Waste Shark was designed by Richard Hardiman of RanMarine to keep the Earth’s oceans clean. Now, Popular Science reports, it’s embarking on its first official mission: To pick up trash in the waters around Rotterdam before it travels too far out to sea.

Hardiman is providing the Port of Rotterdam Authority in the Netherlands with four Waste Shark prototypes, which will patrol Rotterdam’s waters through the end of the year. The sharks, which are approximately the size of a passenger car, pick up trash in a 14-inch “mouth” that extends below the surface of the water. They’re autonomous, which means they’re able to patrol for trash 24/7 without oversight.

Hardiman hopes that the Waste Sharks could eventually help make ocean trash a thing of the past. In a statement he explained, “It may sound like a strange thing to say for an entrepreneur, but my mission will only truly be accomplished when I’m ‘out of business.'”

[h/t Popular Science]

The Waste Shark is like a Roomba for the ocean. A small aquatic drone that can vacuum up 1100 pounds of floating trash, the Waste Shark was designed by Richard Hardiman of RanMarine to keep the Earth’s oceans clean. Now, Popular Science reports, it’s embarking on its first official mission: To pick up trash in the waters around Rotterdam before it travels too far out to sea.

Hardiman is providing the Port of Rotterdam Authority in the Netherlands with four Waste Shark prototypes, which will patrol Rotterdam’s waters through the end of the year. The sharks, which are approximately the size of a passenger car, pick up trash in a 14-inch “mouth” that extends below the surface of the water. They’re autonomous, which means they’re able to patrol for trash 24/7 without oversight.

Hardiman hopes that the Waste Sharks could eventually help make ocean trash a thing of the past. In a statement he explained, “It may sound like a strange thing to say for an entrepreneur, but my mission will only truly be accomplished when I’m ‘out of business.'”

[h/t Popular Science]

After having lunch at Little Caesar’s one afternoon, Hannah Spooner, a 19-year-old Michigan resident, and her boyfriend Pete Kadry entered a sweepstakes to win free pizza for a year. That decision paid off, the couple took home the grand prize—and now, they’re paying it forward, Fox News Detroit reports.

Spooner gifted the pies—52 pizza vouchers valued at $500—to local charity Covenant House Michigan, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, vocational programs, and three meals a day to homeless and at-risk youth in Detroit.

“I just lost a lot of weight, I wasn’t trying to eat a lot of pizza,” Spooner joked with Inside Edition. “Detroit is going through a lot of negativity,” Spooner told InsideEdition.com. “I wanted somewhere close to home that would be affected by my donation.”

Employees at Covenant House admitted they were surprised. “I look at young people and they believe it’s very important to give back to the community,” an administrator from Covenant House said in the video below. “But I don’t know if they would give pizza back.”

[h/t Fox News Detroit]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

After having lunch at Little Caesar’s one afternoon, Hannah Spooner, a 19-year-old Michigan resident, and her boyfriend Pete Kadry entered a sweepstakes to win free pizza for a year. That decision paid off, the couple took home the grand prize—and now, they’re paying it forward, Fox News Detroit reports.

Spooner gifted the pies—52 pizza vouchers valued at $500—to local charity Covenant House Michigan, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, vocational programs, and three meals a day to homeless and at-risk youth in Detroit.

“I just lost a lot of weight, I wasn’t trying to eat a lot of pizza,” Spooner joked with Inside Edition. “Detroit is going through a lot of negativity,” Spooner told InsideEdition.com. “I wanted somewhere close to home that would be affected by my donation.”

Employees at Covenant House admitted they were surprised. “I look at young people and they believe it’s very important to give back to the community,” an administrator from Covenant House said in the video below. “But I don’t know if they would give pizza back.”

[h/t Fox News Detroit]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Simon, the popular light up memory game from the ’80s, has a pretty simple premise: The computer plays a pattern of lights and sounds, and you replicate them by pushing the right buttons. Such a simple game needs no improvements—or does it? The latest version looks just like Darth Vader and even plays the ominous “Imperial March.”

While Simon is normally round, the new game is shaped like the Sith Lord’s iconic helmet. It’s also completely black until it lights up, so now you also have to remember which buttons are which without the aid of colored buttons. Players will notice that the further along they get, the more of John Williams’ “Imperial March” they get to hear. Darth Vader’s loud breathing can also be detected during gameplay to add an extra layer of stress. 

The game will be available this spring for $25 from Hasbro, so watch your local toy store’s shelves carefully. 

[h/t io9]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Simon, the popular light up memory game from the ’80s, has a pretty simple premise: The computer plays a pattern of lights and sounds, and you replicate them by pushing the right buttons. Such a simple game needs no improvements—or does it? The latest version looks just like Darth Vader and even plays the ominous “Imperial March.”

While Simon is normally round, the new game is shaped like the Sith Lord’s iconic helmet. It’s also completely black until it lights up, so now you also have to remember which buttons are which without the aid of colored buttons. Players will notice that the further along they get, the more of John Williams’ “Imperial March” they get to hear. Darth Vader’s loud breathing can also be detected during gameplay to add an extra layer of stress. 

The game will be available this spring for $25 from Hasbro, so watch your local toy store’s shelves carefully. 

[h/t io9]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

Lynne Murphy is an American linguist who has been living in the UK for 21 years. For 10 of them she has been writing the blog Separated by a Common Language, detailing the many ways, both subtle and obvious, American and British English part ways. No one is more of an expert on the UK/North America differences, so you can imagine her shock when she realized that all this time, the people around her had a completely different understanding of the word frown. For her, the locus of the frown was the mouth. For the Brits around her, it was not the mouth, but the brow that made the frown.

She discovered this fact through an old blog post by Michael Wagner, a linguistics professor at McGill University, where he tells the story of how he found out that frown meant something different to him (he is British) than to his Canadian friend. They were looking at a piece of abstract art at a museum when his friend asked, “Do you think this is a frown or a moustache?” Wagner was confused because,

Whatever ‘this’ was, it was clearly below the eyes, and also, the facial expression was sad—so how could it be a frown? My understanding of frown was what I later found in Webster’s online dictionary:

1 : an expression of displeasure
2 : a wrinkling of the brow in displeasure or concentration

When I expressed my puzzlement, I learned that frown, in fact, also means the opposite of smile: a downward facing mouth expressing sadness, and that this is in fact the most common/salient meaning of the word, at least to some.

What is a frown? A look of displeasure, made with the eyebrows? Or a sad face, made with downturned mouth? Informal surveys performed by Wagner at the time and then six years later by Murphy both revealed the same result, which can be summed up as “Wait! OMG! THAT’S what you think it means? I had no idea!” And “Oooohhh, so that’s why Americans say ‘turn that frown upside down’!”

So what’s a frown to you? The opposite of a smile or a furrowed forehead of concern?

Check out Wagner’s original post, and read the very interesting ensuing discussion at Separated by a Common Language, which suggests there may be age and regional effects influencing your decision.