Harpagon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A greedy person who hoards money obsessively ; a hooked grappling iron once used to seize and hold enemy ships
2. An extremely stingy man who refuses to spend anything ; an ancient iron hook thrown to grip and drag vessels together
3. A miserly character type named after Molière's old skinflint ; a barbed grapnel formerly flung to snag and hold a ship

Etymology: Harpagon is the miser at the centre of Molière's comedy "L'Avare" (1668), and the name has outlived the play as a common noun for a tightfisted person. Molière took it from Latin "harpagō", a name that the Roman playwright Plautus had used for a character in "Aulularia", and that word goes back to Ancient Greek "harpagē", meaning "hook". The Greek hook sense is close to the verb "harpazō", "to snatch away, to seize", so a man who grabs and keeps everything he touches fits the name's original picture neatly. The same Greek root produced "harpoon", which is a doublet of this word: both came into the language from the same source by different routes, one through Latin and French and the other through a separate Romance-influenced path, so they look like unrelated words. A harpoon is a barbed hook thrown to seize a whale, and the miser's name carries that grasping image over into a human character trait.

Synonyms: miser, skinflint, niggard, scrooge, penny-pincher

Antonyms: spendthrift, prodigal