Seriously, folks, I wouldn't use the term "niggardly" around elementary school-aged children. With such a bounty of synonyms available, why cause confusion and offense? And to explain the term would just cause more confusion and offense. Really. Kids hear a little of what you say--and you often lose their attention when something that you said that they haven't understood has grasped their imaginations and they turn you off. I'm talking about little kids here. Certainly by high school, niggardly on a vocabularly test would be fine.
I think it's so weird--and I don't understand the pheonomenon at all!--that black people can refer to each other as "niggers" so easily and with humor and sometimes, too, with insult. Of course, out of the mouth of anybody else of any other color, it becomes a word that damns the speaker. I understand the damning of the speaker, but I just don't understand why nigger is used so freely among black people. Is there any other instance of an offensive term being used by a group that will not tolerate its use by members outside of the group?
