Miser
person who is reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions
A miser , or scrooge, is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. Although the word is sometimes used loosely to characterise anyone who is mean with their money, if such behaviour is not accompanied by taking delight in what is saved, it is not properly miserly.
Misers have been a perennial object of popular fascination and a source for writers and artists in many cultures.
Accounting for misers
One attempt to account for miserly behaviour was Sigmund Freud's theory of anal retentiveness, attributing the development of miserly behaviour to toilet training in childhood, although this explanation is not accepted by modern evidence-based psychology.
In the Christian West the attitude to those whose interest centred on gathering money has been coloured by the teachings of the Church. From its point of view, both the miser and the usurer were guilty of the cardinal sin of avarice and shared behaviours. According to the parable of the Elm and the Vine in the quasi-Biblical Shepherd of Hermas, the rich and the poor should be in a relationship of mutual support. Those with wealth are in need of the prayers of the poor for their salvation and can only earn them by acts of charity. A typical late example of Christian doctrine on the subject is the Reverend Erskine Neale's The Riches that Bring No Sorrow (1852), a moralising work based on a succession of biographies contrasting philanthropists and misers.
Running parallel has been a disposition, inherited from Classical times, to class miserly behaviour as a type of eccentricity.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Miser” as person who is reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as person who is reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1499127. The first chronological checks are 1852.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Miser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.