Niggard (a stingy or ungenerous person) and its adjectival niggardly appear in the fourteenth century and are, like niggle, benign words unrelated to the similar-sounding racial slur. However, niggard and niggardly share an unfortunate aural similarity to that very racial slur and should thus be used carefully, especially in speech. Note that, unlike the slur, neither is spelled with an e.