Definition of "mingy"

'And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?''No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. 'The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each--'

1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter XV, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, authorized British edition, London: Martin Secker […], published February 1932 (May 1932 printing)

After the Liberation Mrs Crewe kept on being as mingy as before with the food; and wouldn't let Harold buy any new clothes.

1974, GB Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, New York, published 2007, page 298

Now all that, in its mingy way, is logical enough.

1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 413