niggard n.

also -art, from Old French -ard, -art, from German -hard, -hart "hardy," forming the second element in many personal names, often used as an intensifier, but in Middle High German and Dutch used as a pejorative element in common nouns, and thus passing into Middle English in bastard, coward, blaffard ("one who stammers"), etc. It thus became a living element in English, as in buzzard, drunkard. The German element is from Proto-Germanic *-hart/*-hard "bold, hardy" (from PIE root *kar- "hard").

c. 1300, "stingy person," which is connected to niggard (q.v.). As an abbreviated form of nigger, the word is attested by c. 1832, in American English, in the "Jim Crow" song. It is noted in an 1879 British book on colonial household management as "a term too often applied ... to the Indian natives."